


FML

by Cards_Slash



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, M/M, moody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 06:09:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17637281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: Spock and Bones hook up during their days at the Academy and everything just gets worse from there.(Repost from LJ 2009)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> originally the chapters were posted as individual stories.

It was nice, Bones figured, not to be the only bastard that had the good sense not to dance with the rest of them. Of course, he didn’t dance because he didn’t want to; dancing reminded him of Jocelyn and the last thing he wanted on his mind was her. Jim liked these dances, he was always out there flirting with girls in long flowing skirts and staring down the plunging necklines because looking was almost as good as touching. Jim would get around to touching eventually. He always did.  
  
“Hey,” he remarked the Vulcan who was helping him hold the wall up.   
  
The only response he got was the slight lift of an eyebrow and the derisive sort of blank expression that explained how pointless his attempts at communication were. “Hello,” was polite enough.  
  
Bones figured that was all the rejection he needed for one night and left while his self-respect was intact.  
  
\--  
  
It just fucking figured—it just  _fucking_  figured on the day he’d gotten up late it would pour down rain and he’d be running through the halls of the Academy clutching at the stupid medical bag that he had better get used to carrying (that’s what they said, he was going to carry it for the rest of his life, better learn to love it) only to round a corner and smash face first into a body that seemed barely impressed at his momentum. The icing on the cake was how he fell on his ass, sprawled and couldn’t even curse because the body belonged to the Vulcan who had to have been a teacher. But the cherry that topped the icing on the cake was the fact that the girl Jim was always chasing was with him and she was all but giggling outright.  
  
“Are you alright?” she asked him.  
  
The Vulcan didn’t move to help him up; he was too busy wiping the water off the front of his uniform. “I would advise you to walk and also to be aware of the weather and prepare yourself accordingly.”  
  
Smug fucking bastard and Bones had to bite his lip and keep his nasty comments to himself because the uppity know-it-all was an instructor. He could mutter under his breath as he walked down the hall after they were gone and that worked out great for him too when the gaggle of girls in short skirts snickered at him.  
  
\--  
  
It was a conspiracy when the Vulcan showed up at an off-campus party in the park. Someone must have impressed upon him the importance of not coming wearing his uniform because he had changed his shirt into something that was black without a zipper. There was a fire and someone that brought a guitar that needed tuning and a couple of hippie-types that had wandered over uninvited but brought a stash of drugs with them so they got to stay.  
  
Bones smoked a cigarette because they were being passed around for free and sitting there glowering at everyone was making him no friends. Mostly he listened to the idiots sing the wrong words to the lyrics and enjoyed the heat of the evening and thought fondly of summers back home with the dirty, muggy nights and a row boat out on the lake. He clapped along when the hippies started some kind of crazy dancing circle and catcalled with the rest of them when girls started losing their clothes—he wasn’t against breasts, he liked breasts.  
  
That girl Jim liked was dancing with them, her hair was wild and she was twisting her arms over her head while the guy playing the guitar beat his poor instrument senseless and someone had shown up with a set of bongo drums.  
  
Classy, that was. Bones looked over his shoulder at where the Vulcan bastard had been watching them and found the spot empty. He thought yeah, he probably should leave too.  
  
\--  
  
It was one of those little family owned businesses that had no hope of staying afloat in a town that was built around an influx of horny college kids attending Starfleet Academy. A nice out of the way place where all the table clothes were red checked and everything smelled like his grandmother’s perfume and wood polish—except the food. They had meatloaf there that made his mouth water and his stomach growl. And corn on the cob that he’d give his eyeteeth for (if not for the fact that eating the corn would be more difficult without teeth).  
  
The place stayed busy, Bones had come back every Tuesday from the first week he’d wandered in there on accident and they kept the table under the front window for him. When he was late he found himself having to share it with some other poor single sap and that was alright most days until the day when it started pouring after he’d decided to walk for the exercise and he arrived dripping wet to find the Vulcan bastard sitting in his usual seat.  
  
It was just his imagination that the Vulcan was amused by him. Bones ordered coffee and his usual plate and the waitress left him with a towel and said she’d be back real quick with the coffee.  
  
“I see,” the Vulcan said as he watched him scrubbing his hair dry with no real expression. “You do not heed pertinent advice.”  
  
“It was sunny when I left,” he said back. And because he liked to know who he was arguing with he said: “You got a name?”  
  
“My name is Spock,” the Vulcan said. He asked for his check when the waitress came back and didn’t bother to get Bones’ name but that was just fine because once he was gone there was more table for Bones.  
  
And the food was good too.  
  
\--  
  
As it turned out, the Vulcan was allergic to grapefruit. He was the sixth bed Bones made it to that Saturday afternoon and the strangest. Bones knew that Vulcans bleed green and it only made sense that when his skin started swelling he’d turn green and of course he wouldn’t scratch the raising bumps because that wouldn’t be logical.   
  
His vitals made no sense whatsoever. Spock watched him shake the tricorder. “Doctor,” he said, “If you would allow me to see the results I will be able to accurately discern if they are abnormal.”  
  
Know it all, Bones showed him the results and thought nothing nice about him except that his hands were warm where their fingers overlapped on the little view screen. “Well?” he said.  
  
“My vitals are well within their normal range,” Spock assured him.   
  
So Bones gave him a hypospray to cure the itching irritated skin and sent him on his way. If he found himself idly looking up Vulcan physiology later that day it was only because he’d need to know it if Spock were ever his patient again.   
  
Fuck him, Vulcans were touch telepaths.  
  
\--  
  
Jim laughed at him a lot, not meanly, just with a chuckle and twinkle and an amused smack on the back of his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. Always that—don’t worry about. It worked to not worry about something when you were the golden-boy-genius. The rest of them had to worry about things or they’d never get anywhere in life.  
  
Bones worried. It’s what he did.   
  
So the next time he found Spock in the halls at the Academy he walked up to him (and worried the whole way) and cleared his throat. “Professor,” he said (and he felt like a fool). “I wanted to apologize about—what you may have…heard me thinking the other day.”  
  
Spock’s eyebrow lifted at that and he nodded. “I assure you no such apology is necessary. I am quite used to the loose thoughts of humans.”  
  
Smug. Pointy-eared. Bastard.   
  
Bones clenched his teeth so hard he tasted blood and nodded before he turned around and left.  
  
\--  
  
Sometime after the fourth bonfire in the park, Bones had gotten sick and tired of listening to the man strangle his guitar and taken it from him, tuned it right and taken over as the resident minstrel. He didn’t sing but he could play and there was always some prettier, younger thing that wanted to sing loud and lead the crowd in rousing renditions of old songs. Sometimes, after they started pairing off and walking around in circles deciding where they were going to land and make out, he just let his fingers wander like the sweat dripping down the back of his neck and the music dragged out into the night with no beginning or end.  
  
It only was.  
  
It was no special Saturday when he looked up from his quiet thoughts being spilled out through endless chords and notes to find Spock sitting on a rock in the distance just watching him. Bones nodded at him and Spock nodded back.  
  
\--  
  
“Fuck, all I want is a blow job,” Jim said after midnight when they’d exhausted their supply of chips and were nowhere near being done with their studying. Or he wasn’t, Jim was probably only there lying across his bed with a stack of textbooks just to make him feel better. But the impish grin an the implication as he looked over at Bones.  
  
“I’m not sucking your dick,” Bones muttered back without looking up from what he was reading.   
  
“I’d suck yours,” Jim said.   
  
It was pure insanity, even bothering to look up and see how plain-faced Jim was about the whole thing. It was nothing but a business deal. Of course it was, Jim could do that, suck your dick one minute and rib you about how your socks didn’t match the next and wander off to find some girl that looked good in the stupid Academy uniform just before he saved the world.  
  
“Unless you’re rigidly straight,” Jim mumbled. “Then never mind.”  
  
No, he wasn’t rigidly anything except hard. “I’m trying to study.”  
  
When Bones woke up the next morning to dreams of Spock sucking him off he blamed Jim and dropped a stack of books on his head accidentally-on-purpose just to make himself feel better.  
  
\--  
  
It was San Fran-fucking-sico, it should not rain this much. Bones hid under the awning of the bridal shop (useless business to have in a college city he thought) with his hands shoved up under his armpits and his teeth grating at the fucking weather while the rain pounded down on the streets.   
  
Spock walked past him on his way to—wherever the fuck—and stopped, turned back to look at him from under the umbrella and seemed genuinely amused. He walked back over to him. “Fascinating,” he said. “It is Tuesday.”  
  
“It’s fascinating that it’s Tuesday?” Bones said. “You must love calendars.” They were, noticeably, out of uniform and far from the Academy’s looming campus. He could smart off here.  
  
“You misunderstood my meaning,” Spock clarified, “I was informed that you regularly eat dinner at Edna’s. As I am walking there now I see no reason we cannot share the umbrella.” Because you, stupid human, don’t watch the weather report.  
  
“Thanks,” he said. So only one of his shoulders got soaked in the rain and there were enough tables when they got there that Spock could sit by himself so Bones sat by himself and didn’t worry about it.  
  
\--  
  
Bones damn well couldn’t explain the tremor in his grip when Spock walked past the bar and the gliding pretty young things on the dance floor and very quietly, purposefully turned on his heels and stood rigidly with his back toward the wall—but not touching. He had his hands behind his back while Bones leaned against the wall and sipped room-temperature champagne out of skinny tall glass.   
  
Times like this made him wish he was Jim so he could think of something real smart and appealing to say. Know how to turn his head right, lick his lips and offer whatever was wanted without a word just a quirk of a smile. Yeah, I’d fuck you so hard you’ll feel it tomorrow, was Jim’s smile at times like this. Bones couldn’t think past the prickle of hair on the back of his arms and the sudden dryness of his mouth. When he did turn his head to look Spock was watching him silently.  
  
Uhura, that pretty girl Jim liked, sidled up to Spock and made short work of moving him where she wanted him.   
  
That was good. Fine. Better than fine. Excellent.   
  
\--  
  
The bonfire was more like a single stick that someone had lit on fire and nobody was paying attention to it anyway. The summer night was hot as hell around them, everyone was laying around half naked, taking slow drags off cigarettes and short sips out of long neck bottles. Everything glimmered in the heat, coated with a fine layer of sweat and condensation.   
  
He kept the guitar low, a sweet little trickle of music that matched the pitiful little fire and everyone was rubbing their hands over the one next to them until it was turning into a circle jerk and he figured they could manage it without a soundtrack. He grabbed a bottle and left them to it.  
  
“Doctor,” was Spock’s voice catching him as he walked away.   
  
Bones didn’t need to be Jim then, Spock had done it for him. All he had to do was nod his head to words they weren’t saying and follow along like a puppy.  
  
\--  
  
Bones didn’t ask about Uhura. Spock didn’t ask him about anything really.   
  
“Is this your first time engaging in sexual relations with another man?” Spock asked him.  
  
“No,” Bones assured him. “And I like to…” How would Spock put it, really? Something fancy sounding. Assume the submissive role, maybe. “Get fucked,” was what he said. That was what they were here for, no reason to call it anything but what it was.  
  
“Indeed,” Spock said and then he didn’t talk much at all. They started in the bedroom because it was simplest—Spock’s room was tidy, impersonal, hardly decorated. It had the look like it hadn’t been lived in and it certainly had never been fucked in. His sheets were cool against Bones’ hot skin, his mouth was hot and his body was impossibly long and hard. His tongue was long and green and his hands were incessant, always moving, tracing and touching, stroking and petting and finally fingers pushing inside of Bones—two at once—and he tipped his head back into the overstuffed pillows and stuttered encouraging grunts.  
  
“Up,” he moaned. A few directions, should have asked Spock if he’d ever had sexual relations with another man—oh right there. Two fingers became three and he was well fucked long before Spock slicked himself up and pushed Bones legs up toward his chest. “Let me,” he managed to pant after Spock was deep inside him. The rest was communicated in sloppy thoughts and how he pushed his legs down, wound them around Spock’s back and hooked his feet. Liked the way Spock felt there, moving between his legs, deep inside of him, liked the way he kissed—how soft his tongue felt, how different he tasted, how he didn’t stop, just kept going and the hard earned little gasps against Bones mouth at last—oh, fuck,  _at last_.  
  
Spock moved to pull back when he was close, someone must have taught him to do that, it was a good practice really, easier to wash come off than out, but Bones clamped his legs around him and held him there, kissed him while Spock’s shoulders shivered in time with Bones clenching down on him. Again and again until Spock grabbed his hands, shoved them against the bed and pounded out his orgasm and strangled his moan when he came.  
  
\--  
  
The next time it rained Bones sat at the top of the steps and shook his head at his stupid fucking luck. Smarter people than him had their umbrellas and their ponchos. They watched the weather report, those ones.  
  
Bones could wait, he didn’t have anywhere more exciting to be than these steps right here. Nothing better to do than watch the smart kids come and go until he finally found someone as stupid as him.   
  
Uhura, unfortunately, stopped short just before the rain and frowned. That was alright because Spock wasn’t too far behind her, always prepared with his umbrella. The Vulcan stopped between where Bones sat and where Uhura stood and glanced at each of them in turn. There was no mistaking who he was going to choose; Bones knew he’d chose.  
  
Pretty girl or stupid human I fucked once.  
  
“Thank you Spock,” Uhura said so sweetly when she was tucked under his umbrella with him and giving him directions about where she needed to go.   
  
Bones figured that just fucking summed it up and he picked himself up off the top of the stairs and stalked out through the rain.


	2. IAWTC

Spock did not understand this particular exercise. It was not, as some other displays, a matter of outward sexual gratification. These people were dressed in formal clothes while they slowly and carefully picked at a selection of food meant to be eaten with one’s fingers and took small sips from tall glasses. The beverage, he assumed, had some alcohol content. The Humans occupying the dance floor did not show signs of the intense inebriation that he was accustom to seeing from large groups of them intent on ‘having a good time’ and ‘dancing’ as Cadet Uhura had phrased it when she urged him to attend this function.  
  
He might have told her that he had no interest in ‘dancing’ and that his definition of a ‘good time’ did not often include social occasions such as this. There were rules to events such as this that were taught to the Humans that practiced them from birth. As Spock was unaware of these rules and customs, he did not feel comfortable engaging in them.   
  
Observation, however, was not an entirely wasted pursuit. After some time he was able to discern the pattern of the dancing and deconstruct the rhythm of the music. It served as some form of meditation that allowed the time to pass until he satisfied his promise to Cadet Uhura to remain at the dance for the predetermined length of time. (He was not entirely certain how she obtained such a promise from him. It was confusing to him.)  
  
He was roused from his meditation by the presence of another body at the corner of his vision. The cadet looked uncomfortable in his dress uniform. He tugged restlessly at the bottom hem while he attempted to look casual against the wall with a drink in hand. There was a faint flush on his neck that could be a sign of embarrassment, arousal or intoxication. Spock attempted to reason out which was more likely by cataloguing his other symptoms and did not realize that he had been spoken to until the cadet’s eyebrows pulled together in a clear expression of anger.  
  
“Hello,” Spock said.  
  
He did not understand why the cadet tipped his glass up to drink the remaining alcohol in one swallow before pushing himself away from the wall and leaving.  
  
Spock was almost entirely certain it was nothing he had done.  
  
\--  
  
“I don’t believe it could be considered logical to consider it a failure after only one attempt, Professor Spock,” Cadet Uhura said.   
  
He was beginning to think that there was a certain intoxicating quality to her voice that he could not bring himself to resist. Perhaps she was—somewhere in her lineage—part of a race of creatures that were known to hypnotize men through song. He had read about them as a child and though his mother informed him that they were fictional creatures to Humans, he was not so convinced that they did not exist  _somewhere_  in the universe.   
  
“You need to try again,” she added to add emphasis to the obvious conclusion of her argument.  
  
“I do not understand your persistent interest in my interactions with Humans, Cadet Uhura. I have received no complaints from my superiors to indicate it is an area of any particular weakness.” In fact, he had often been praised for his honesty and at least once in recent memory for his diplomacy. One man had compared him to his father in a favorable way and Spock was still uncertain as to whether he should consider that a compliment or a slight against him.  
  
“Spock,” she said even if it were informal and they were clearly in the halls of the Academy.  
  
What she intended to say next was interrupted by the sudden impact of a body against Spock that momentarily shifted his balance. He managed to keep his footing and the body fell back against the floor with a loud thump and clatter. It was a cadet—it was  _the_  cadet from the dance. He was red in the face again with a similar look of aggravation and annoyance about his eyebrows. He glanced at Cadet Uhura after she giggled—perhaps rudely—and then at him before climbing to his feet.  
  
“Are you alright?” Cadet Uhura asked.  
  
Spock wiped at the dampness on the front of his uniform and looked up to find the angry cadet staring at him as if he were the one that lacked manners. It should not have offended him but it did. “I would advise you to walk,” he said, “and also to be more aware of the weather and prepare yourself accordingly.”  
  
The angry cadet glared at him before he nodded and turned to walk around them in a wide circle. He whispered things under his breath that were mostly curse words that were nearly drown out by the sound of his boots squeaking on the hard floors.  
  
Cadet Uhura snickered before she turned around to look at him. “There’s this little bonfire, Spock—it’s in the park, I think you should go.”  
  
\--  
  
Spock was uncomfortable in civilian clothes. It was an unfortunate indication that Cadet Uhura’s assertion that he was uncomfortable around Humans could be correct. It was not that he could not relate to them but rather that he was unsure of their culture. Vulcan had structure. These Humans seemed to move in chaotic eddies.  
  
There was a fire in the park when the weather was perfectly warm and there were many well-lit venues in which to gather. There were women that danced in the grass without shoes when it really was a barbarian practice that left their feet coated in dirt to their ankles. There were cigarettes being passed around the group without care or concern for the spread of disease and the possibility of future health problems such behavior invited.  
  
The guitar was badly tuned and it hurt Spock’s ears.  
  
Cadet Uhura arrived far later than she said that she would and seemed to expect that he had enjoyed himself. When he indicated that he had not enjoyed his time spent there she was disappointed but said she understood. Her understanding was limited by her control over her emotions and was not entirely sincere.   
  
Spock felt it was best to leave. As he stood to go he saw the angry cadet in plainclothes leaning back against his elbows in the grass. He had a cigarette burning between two fingers of his right hand while he winced at the sound of the music.   
  
There was, quite noticeably, nobody else around him. It was only an idle observation and Spock dismissed it.  
  
\--  
  
Spock had found the small establishment through the recommendation of a fellow student some years ago who assured him that Spock would never find a better pastrami sandwich or a fresher salad. While the sandwich was of no particular interest to him, the salad had seemed promising. Spock had visited Edna’s for the first time with some skepticism. They were polite, their restaurant was pleasantly warm and well lit and the food was of an acceptable.  
  
It also afforded him an opportunity to be among the people of San Francisco without being obligated to interact with them. Furthermore, it was in easy walking distance from his apartment. It quickly became a place he frequented and they no longer asked him what he wished to eat but rather brought him his food without delay.  
  
“Now, I’m going to let you sit here,” Sara said as she brushed the table clean with a cloth, “but you might end up sharing with the good doctor. He’s in here every Tuesday—like you, kind of. Only Tuesdays and not Thursdays. Why  _are_  you here today?” she asked.  
  
“I have an obligation this Thursday,” Spock said. He agreed to share and she laughed at him but did not tell him she was not being literal.  
  
It began to rain when he was halfway through eating his salad. The water was beating hard against the windows when the scowling cadet appeared in his peripheral vision. His clothes were sodden against his skin, there was water dripping off his nose and he had an unfortunate similarity to a poster that his colleague kept in her office of a small wet puppy.   
  
The thought amused him.  
  
“See there,” Sara said as she handed the cadet a towel and accepted his order.  
  
“I see,” Spock said, “You do not heed pertinent advice.”  
  
The cadet—a doctor, Sara said—finished wiping his face only to sneer at him all the harder and motion back toward the window where the rain continued. “It was sunny when I left.” Clearly, he had not viewed the weather report. “You got a name?” the doctor demanded.  
  
“My name is Spock,” he answered. He began to ask the man what he had done to cause him to be angry and after a quick overview of the symptoms concluded that it could be a simple case of prejudice. It seemed unlikely given that this man seemed unlikeable even by the standards of his fellow humans but it was not impossible.  
  
The thought left Spock uncomfortable. He left without inquiring after the doctor’s name. He did not understand why the thought that he had been rude would not leave him at peace when he attempted to meditate.  
  
\--  
  
As it turned out, Spock was allergic to grapefruit. The swelling and rash were both quite painful. He had been ushered back into the urgent care rooms of the emergency room that was run by the Academy. A polite nurse had gathered his list of symptoms and offered a injection to ease the pain of the swelling which he politely declined.  
  
When the doctor arrived he was frowning at the PADD in his hand before he looked up. The doctor seemed startled to see him. Spock could not place his own sense of surprise to find a doctor in an emergency room.   
  
It must have been that sense of shock that kept the doctor from offering his name. Spock was not sure why he did not ask for it. When the Doctor touched him his mind was as unpleasantly tense as the constant frown he wore on his face. There was not, however, any direct malice toward Spock himself. Only a general dislike for the readings he got, the rash, the weather, the chill in the room, the state of his life and the world. He also, apparently, did not like onion.  
  
Misery, as Spock understood it, was a somewhat uncommon Human condition in this modern age.   
  
“Doctor,” Spock said. “If you would allow me to see the results I will be able to accurately discern if they are abnormal.”  
  
Subsequently, the doctor seemed offended by Spock’s knowledge of his own body. Spock did not understand this and attributed it to the man’s deep sense of unhappiness that he wore around him. It seemed as an effective deterrent to social interaction as Spock’s own stoicism.   
  
He did not understand why he drew such comparisons.  
  
\--  
  
Spock could not satisfactorily explain why he kept a count of the number of times he saw the doctor in the halls of the Academy. It had begun as nothing more than the quiet recognition of a face that had yet to have a name to accompany it. (He was also not sure if the doctor had not given him his name out of some sense of spite to be intentionally rude or if he had honestly forgotten to introduce himself.) It had occurred to Spock after the ninth sighting that he had been cataloguing when and where and how often he saw the doctor.  
  
It was a troubling realization.  
  
Still, it continued until the twenty ninth occurrence when the doctor came up to him with a new expression. This one was as flushed as his anger but also pale. His hands were restless, pressing his palms against his pants as if they were damp.   
  
“Professor,” the doctor said, “I wanted to apologize about—what you may have…heard me thinking the other day.”  
  
Apparently, after their encounter, the doctor had indulged in some manner of research as to the telepathic capabilities of Vulcans. (Perhaps he also conducted some research into basic physiology as well, even if it would prove useless in ascertaining Spock’s health status.) “I assure you no such apology is necessary. I am quite used to the loose thoughts of humans.”  
  
The familiar expression of miserable disharmony returned to the doctor’s face. Spock imagined that, should he have touched the man, he could have heard the grinding, heated, furious thoughts that were laced with curse words.   
  
Spock watched the doctor leave without a clear idea as to why he would be so upset.  
  
\--  
  
Cadet Uhura insisted on meeting with him in the library at the conclusion of their classes on Wednesdays. It had been, at one point, for further and individual instruction concerning her mastery of the Vulcan language. Long after she had mastered that it had become a matter of habit. He was uncertain that it was entirely acceptable considering the standing disapproval of cadet-professor relationships.  
  
Spock also considered that he had no sexual attraction to Cadet Uhura and decided that friendship between two persons of a comparable age was nothing that humans would frown upon so long as he did not take advantage of his position. Rather, she seemed to take advantage of her unexplainable skill of securing his agreement to her plans.  
  
She urged him, repeatedly, to  _try again_  concerning social interaction off campus. Spock agreed without specific requirements.   
  
It was, perhaps, why he found himself at the bonfire. The doctor had tuned the guitar since the last time Spock had attended the function and was sitting with it cradled in his lap. Spock could appreciate music for more than its tonal qualities. Even as a child he had favored music as a source of entertainment and this was somewhat elementary music that lacked structure and organization but it seemed to, however illogically,  _feel_.   
  
It was objectively fascinating.  
  
When the doctor saw him sitting in the distance there was no frown on his face but recognition. There was no one else in attendance that seemed to notice or care that music was being played. The doctor nodded and Spock nodded back.  
  
They had, as one might say, an understanding.  
  
\--  
  
“Who are you thinking about?” Cadet Uhura asked him. She often came to visit him in his office when she had free time and knew that his classes were not keeping him otherwise occupied. There was the matter of correcting a section of coding in the Kobayashi Maru simulation that he had intended to attend to. Her sudden presence was startling, as was the time that read on the chronometer.  
  
Cadet Uhura’s smile betrayed her amusement but there was something quietly unsettled about the way she stared at him for his answer.  
  
“A cadet,” Spock answered. He did not lie.  
  
“What’s her name?” Cadet Uhura asked.  
  
“It is a male cadet,” he corrected, “he is a doctor and I am otherwise unaware of his name.” He did not understand why she seemed to nod at herself, nor why her smile changed into something else entirely. Her change of subject seemed abrupt but he welcomed it as discussion of the cafeteria menu was easier than attempting to determine the source of his distraction with the doctor.  
  
\--  
  
It was a Tuesday, in the rain, when Spock decided that he wished to engage in sexual intercourse with the doctor. The urge seemed strange to him but the realization set him at peace as if his body were soothed by finally being acknowledged. Perhaps if he considered it nothing more than carnal lust, the urge made more sense.  
  
The doctor was physically attractive even if he were otherwise abrasive and unlikeable.   
  
Spock found him and the realization under the awning of a bridal shop on his way to Edna’s. The doctor was hugging his chest with his hands buried under his arms for the sake of warmth. His street clothes were clinging to his shoulders in an attractive way. His hair was wet in the same way that left him looking like an unfortunately wet puppy.  
  
It was the little sigh and the half-curl of the doctor’s lip that acknowledge the hopelessness of his own situation that prompted Spock’s realization that he wished to have sex with this man. The timing was strange, perhaps, except that the doctor was more attractive with that half-smile.  
  
“Fascinating,” Spock said mostly to himself. Then, as he stepped closer, “It is Tuesday.”  
  
“It’s fascinating that its Tuesday?” the doctor asked. His teeth clicked together once while he spoke. “You must  _love_  calendars.”  
  
While the sarcasm was unattractive, the man’s confidence made his skin lack the pallor that had previously always made him look somewhat ill. Spock did not smile back. In fact, he gave no outward indication that he inwardly wished to have sex with him. (Even if the thought was quite prominent and distracting now that it had been acknowledged.)  
  
“You misunderstood my meaning,” Spock clarified, “I was informed that you regularly eat dinner at Edna’s. As I am walking there now I see no reason we cannot share the umbrella.” It was, as he understood it, some acceptable method of courting to share one’s belongings. His offer surprised him as much as it seemed to surprise the doctor.  
  
“Thanks,” he said. They walked together, each with a shoulder getting damp in the rain until they reached Edna’s. The dining room was not busy and consequently they were shown to individual tables.   
  
The doctor seemed content with this arrangement so Spock did not object either.  
  
\--  
  
It was a Friday, at a dance, when Spock believed the doctor came to the realization that he wished to have sex with Spock. If his own realization made no sense, the doctor’s realization made less. He had made no gesture of friendship or courtship—he had not even offered his name. Yet, with a strange stiffness about his limbs and a tight and very nearly disbelieving expression in his eyes, he placed himself in close proximity to Spock.  
  
It was, Spock assumed, some manner of announcing sexual availability. He might have taken advantage of it if Cadet Uhura had not otherwise commanded his attention.  
  
\--  
  
It was the following Saturday, at the bonfire, when they reached a mutual conclusion. The doctor sat with the guitar in his lap and played music that was ignored by the distracted ears of the lewd crowd. They were engaging in various sexual acts in the grass in full view of whoever wished to see.  
  
Spock could not entirely contain his disgust at the display. He could not explain why it did not dampen his own lust for the doctor. He did not question the tightening tension in his belly when he saw the doctor frown at their displays and stand to leave.  
  
For a moment, Spock was unsure—he had no name by which to call the doctor and therefore debated between cadet and doctor. Cadet implied that he was somehow superior. They were not performing under their roles as Professor and Cadet so the title was inappropriate. Furthermore, he felt, the doctor would be more pleased to be acknowledged by his chosen profession.  
  
“Doctor,” he said.  
  
The man turned back to look at him. No further words were necessary and were therefore not wasted.  
  
\--  
  
“Is this your first time engaging in sexual relations with another man?” Spock asked.  
  
The doctor was rubbing the back of his neck as he looked around the front room of his small apartment. It seemed to meet with his approval. “No,” he said. Then that half-smile that made him more attractive than the pink flush to his skin. “And I like to—” He waved his hand in the air absently while he attempted to decide how to phrase his desires. Spock assumed the end of the sentence would announce his preference as related to penetrative sex. The doctor looked at him at last and sighed in that same manner that seemed to salute his own hopeless tactlessness. “…get fucked,” he said at last.  
  
Yes. That was agreeable. “Indeed,” Spock said.  
  
The doctor removed his own clothes and folded them crudely, tossed them over the chair and looked at Spock’s walls. His preoccupation with the interior decorating was only moderately insulting. Spock kissed him once they were both naked, pulling him close to feel the exotic chill of his lukewarm skin. His hair was half-dried with sweat and therefore tacky between Spock’s fingers. The tops of his ears were strangely round and his tongue had those interesting pronounced taste buds that felt odd against his own.  
  
The doctor moaned readily, climbed onto the bed and lay on his back eagerly. He accepted and praised every touch, bared himself with no sense of shame and exalted in his own sexual satisfaction. “Up,” he said when Spock had pushed his lubricant-slicked fingers into the doctor’s body. Yes, the prostate—he had studied human anatomy for such interesting discoveries when he had first become interested in sexual relations with them. Neither of his previous partners had reacted so strongly.  
  
Some combination of the doctor’s spiraling thoughts and the damp, snug heat of his body made Spock’s thoughts drop. It was a matter of sensation, of the writhe and wriggle of the doctor’s body, of the taste of his skin under Spock’s tongue and how close to the precipice of orgasm Spock could bring him with his fingers alone before he ceased his movements. The doctor cursed him behind his clenched teeth and begged him for more with his every subconscious thought.   
  
When Spock lifted himself to kiss the doctor again his entire body was flushed and aching with want for the next step. The doctor wrapped his legs around Spock and urged with his hands even as he yielded without a single objection or miserable thought. He stroked and gripped until Spock was distracted. He was close to orgasm and moved to pull back but the doctor held him there—defied the manners of polite sexual interaction Spock had been taught—and teased him. The thoughts of need-want-now and the raw desire in the heavy pant of the doctor’s breath made Spock forget his control.  
  
He pinned the man’s wrists to the bed and sought his own satisfaction with a brass carelessness for his partner’s comfort. The doctor only threw his head back as his body quaked and shivered and his pleasure increased until Spock could not contain himself.  
  
It did not make sense.  
  
\--  
  
Spock stood in front of the view screen as the daily weather report ran across the screen. He considered the two umbrellas he kept by his door. It would be illogical to carry both of them when one would suffice. The lingering urge to have a second on hand should he meet the doctor today (and the doctor surely would not have an umbrella with him) was not entirely logical.   
  
As Spock understood it, they had indulged in what a Human might call a ‘one night stand’ and therefore were expected to act as if they had either never met one another or had forgotten the other’s name. As Spock was not aware of the doctor’s name it would not be difficult to act as if he were unaware of it. Consequently, offering the man an umbrella would be awkward and perhaps insulting. Humans were contradictory and confusing in that manner.  
  
Spock straightened his uniform again before he turned off the view screen and walked past the open door of his bedroom (but he didn’t think of the doctor or of how quickly the man had left the other night) toward the door. He picked up his favored umbrella and hesitated again about the second before resolutely deciding against it.


	3. Searching for Rain

It was Tuesday when Jim cheated the Kobayashi Maru, wearing that ridiculous one piece gray thing that felt like a soft sweater and itched like a wool blanket while he sprawled himself in the chair and grinned like an idiot. Bones figured he should give the man the benefit of the doubt, assume he got lucky, or maybe call him a genius. And he might have done any of those things if Jim hadn’t started chomping on that apple like an oversexed cow and strutting his ass around the fake bridge all but literally waving his dick in the wind.  
  
Jim cheated. There was no other way to look at it; a brilliant mind against a test that was unbeatable anyway. Jim would never look at it like cheating; he’d never consider it cheating. It wasn’t, it was just refusing to lose and refusing to lose was good sense. (The sort of sense Bones thought he might benefit from sometimes.)  
  
They were in the locker room, peeling off the itchy-wool-knit-one-piece-gray thing when Jim caught him by the shoulders. “I told you I’d beat it.”  
  
“You didn’t tell me  _that_  was how you planned to do it,” Bones hissed back, under his breath and shrugged Jim off his shoulders.  
  
“Loosen up, Bones,” Jim said. “All I did was win.”  
  
\--  
  
Even Jim Kirk was capable of guilt; Bones figured, maybe, maybe it wasn’t guilt. Maybe celebrating something this magnificent was a job better suited for someone actually willing to suck your dick. Maybe Bones wasn’t sure that he wanted to celebrate something that was going to get Jim in more trouble than it got him out of.   
  
Maybe he just liked Edna’s meatloaf more than he liked Tennessee whiskey and Jim’s dissertation on the perfect set of tits that always followed shortly after they’d drained the bottle about halfway. ( _’s like this,_  Jim slurred with his hands spread out and his fingers bent.  _Enough to hold—‘s good, I like ‘em big, big enough to sleep on, ya know. Nice pair of—_ ) Three quarters of the way down Jim got droopy eyed and started singing and there were better ways to spend his night than listening to a drunk singing lullabies to himself.   
  
That was, of course, until Spock showed up at the side of his table still wearing his stiff black uniform with a blanker expression than normal. “Good evening, doctor,” Spock said. You’d think after you fucked a guy you’d lower yourself to use his name. Unless Spock thought doctor was his name. Could be, might be an alien thing. “May I join you?”  
  
“Uhura busy?”  
  
Spock’s head tilted to one side almost imperceptibly and then straightened. “I am unaware of the exact whereabouts of Cadet Uhura.”  
  
“Yeah, sure—whatever.” Bones motioned him to the empty seat across from his and Spock managed to fold himself out of standing stiffly to sit stiffly.   
  
He didn’t order anything to eat; he refused a glass of water. And they sat in the strained and uncomfortable silence while he chopped up his green beans and chewed on his potatoes. “Did you want something?” he asked.  
  
“It has come to my attention that you are closely acquainted with James T. Kirk,” Spock said.  
  
Right. “Yeah.”  
  
“Might I ask you a personal query in regards to your friend?” Funny how Spock could make friend sound like a four letter word.  
  
“He’s single,” Bones muttered. Almost all conversations about Jim ended with some bimbo shifting on their feet asking if Jim was available and did-Bones-know-what-he-liked-any-advice-he’s-so-cute-hot-look-at-his-eyes.   
  
“That,” Spock said with no humor. “Is not my query. I wished to inquire as to whether you were aware of any special proficiency your friend might have with manipulating computer codes.”  
  
Bones sat back in the chair, let his fork clang against the plate and licked the extra potatoes out from between his teeth and his lips. Spock was a professor. Bones hadn’t ever looked into what sort of professor he was because it didn’t really matter to him much. But it would figure—it would fit—it would just be perfect if the bastard turned out to be involved with the Kobayashi Maru. The unbeatable test, that kind of fit with Spock’s blank stare just calmly waiting.   
  
“Don’t know,” Bones said just as flatly as Spock’s expression.  
  
“You are aware that purposefully hindering an academic investigation is grounds for immediate expulsion,” Spock informed him.  
  
Bones nodded. He was pretty sure fucking a cadet was grounds for something too. He pulled his napkin out of his lap and threw it on his half-eaten dinner as he stood up, hit his thigh against the table in the process and cursed under his breath. Spock rose with him, so close Bones could smell the heat of his skin. “If you’ve got a problem with Jim,” Bones said. “Take it up with him.”  
  
\--  
  
It was Wednesday when the student body was called into the large hall for the emergency meeting of the academic someone-stepped-in-shit council. Jim was too calm at his side, perfectly still and all that meant was that he knew he was the one with shit on his shoes. Bones fidgeted for him, couldn’t get comfortable, couldn’t stop looking around the hall until everyone was seated and the lynching began.  
  
Jim wanted to know who caught him; that made sense. Bones would want to know who but he didn’t want to know that it was Spock. Made sense, he thought, wasn’t a surprise at least.  
  
Hating Spock, well that was a surprise. (No, it wasn’t.)  
  
\--  
  
He damn well fucking lost count of the days, he lost track of the time, he’d lost at least four pounds and he’d lost men. People had died, right there in Sickbay, people burned black and bleeding—everyone else, the other ships, the Vulcans, their friends, their enemies.  
  
Bones couldn’t wrap his head around it, couldn’t bring himself to feel anything at all but the comfortable gray blanket of numbness. So he pulled his focus down, narrowed and sharpened and solely centered on Jim. Jim’s bruised throat, his broken ribs, his wrist, his face, his bitten tongue, the dark circles around his eyes and the seemingly never ending bounce of excitement. “You’re lucky you’re not dead,” Bones hissed at him.  
  
“You’re telling me,” Jim said. The skin of his palms was rubbed off, had to hurt like a son of a bitch.   
  
They didn’t talk about the rest, how Jim had saved their lives, how Bones had risked his career to give him that chance, how Pike was probably never going to walk again and they were so far from home Bones couldn’t imagine how they were ever going to get back. Jim was Captain now, acting Captain, sitting on a biobed without his shirt and grinning because he couldn’t stop.  
  
“Idiot,” Bones mumbled when he had done all that he could.   
  
\--  
  
It took him a while to figure out what the fuck that annoying chime was—a little flailing around, he rolled over onto Jim once smacking blindly toward the source of the noise, half thinking it must have been an alarm clock or something. And Jim had groaned in his sleep and shoved him off. Bones cursed at the noise and it just persisted.  
  
He fell out of bed when he tried to get up, knocked his elbow on the stand next to the bed, walked into a wall in the dark and blindly felt his way toward the door. How the hell did he open the fucking thing? Really should remember there was a whole lecture on the inner working of a space ship and he was fairly certain they’d toured one and it wasn’t like the doors worked that differently. Had to be a screen or a voice command or something—he didn’t know, the annoying sound stopped before he found the panel that was set on low because he’d been sleeping. “Open the door,” he told it. The doors hissed open—interesting—  
  
Blinding light too, he stuck his head out and looked around.   
  
Spock was halfway down the corridor, must have heard the door opened because he stopped and turned on his heels to look at him.   
  
“What?” wasn’t polite or sensitive or the right thing to say to a commanding officer (was Spock a commanding officer now? He’d given up the Captain spot did that make him the Commander again? It made his head hurt to try to think).  
  
Spock looked like he was trying to figure out what he wanted to say. “I did not mean to wake you, I apologize doctor.”   
  
Right. Then Spock turned and left.  
  
\--  
  
Acting Captain Kirk was gone before Bones woke up that morning (was it morning), off to find his own quarters and sort out what the hell they were going to do without a warp core and dealing with Starfleet and the damage on the ship and where to put the Vulcans that were clogging up the corridors with their straight backed stiff-upper lipped stoicism.   
  
Bones had the fun task of sorting through the swarm of red-shirted repairmen that were trying to piece the Sickbay back into better working order and the line of patients that was damn near unending. There was a delightful monotony to that, what’s your problem—burned, sir—yeah I can fix that, allergic to anything—no sir—good. Liberal application of the dermal regenerator, a few dozen hyposprays, a couple of lost fingers from stupid kids that only half knew how to use the equipment needed to fix the ship and Bones had never been so damn tired in his life. He shuffled from the last patient to the next one and didn’t even have the energy to be surprised to find Spock there.  
  
“What is it?” he asked.  
  
Spock stood and pulled his shirts up and over his head, didn’t so much as wince once while he did so and took the time to straight the shirts before he laid them across the biobed. “I believe I sustained the injury while attempting to rescue the High Council on Vulcan,” Spock explained and turned around to face the bed.  
  
“Damn,” Bones said before he could catch himself. The upper left half of Spock’s back was bruised, spreading out over his shoulder and dipping down below his shoulder blades. “Why’d you wait so long to come see me?”  
  
“The injury is not life-threatening, doctor.”  
  
No, it wasn’t, but it was ugly as fuck. Bones ran the tricorder over Spock, watched the readings and still had no idea what exactly Spock’s normal vitals could be considered. Half Vulcan, half Human, his body didn’t work exactly like either. “Does it hurt?” Then he ran the very tips of his fingers across it lightly, the skin was tight but the bones were all intact under the bruise.  
  
“It is uncomfortable,” Spock agreed.  
  
Stupid Vulcans. Stiff-upper lip bastards. Pain wasn’t an emotion, it was a physical response and there was nothing wrong with admitting that they felt it. (But really, admitting one thing would only get them that much closer to admitting the next. Wouldn’t it?) Bones shook his head. He called for the nurse and did what he could to reduce the swelling and speed up the healing.  
  
“Thank you, doctor,” Spock said when he had finished.  
  
\--  
  
Space. The final frontier. The big black suffocating blanket with a bunch of stars winking at you because they fucking well knew that man was never meant to be up here. There they were anyway; there he was, lying across his bed watching the low glow of lights overhead. It wasn’t a whole lot like the sun. It didn’t feel like the soft ambiance of the evening even if the computer assured him it would. It felt a lot like a sunlamp. Evening light slanted in through the open window, played shadows across the floor and pulled you gently down into a sleepy appreciation for the day. (Unless you were Jim, then it just made you horny.) This light was straight overhead, these shadows stretched from sturdy, serviceable, anonymous pieces of furniture.  
  
Bones owned nothing in the room but his own body. He half figured he only partially owned that since he’d enlisted it.  
  
He wanted a drink, he wanted a bonfire, maybe finally give in and take some of those little white pills the hippies brought around, dance in the grass with his shoes and his shirt off, letting whoever wanted to touch him where they wanted.   
  
He wanted Jim there to snore at his side, just to sleep, so Bones could feel like something was real. So he wouldn’t have time to think about anything and how they had bodies in a deep freezer somewhere on the ship, the half mutilated bodies of men and women. No, he didn’t want to think about that.  
  
Long after midnight, long after one, when the chronometer was counting off seconds toward two in the morning that chime came back again and Bones picked his tired body up off the bed and shuffled over to answer it.  
  
“Open the door,” he said to the panel that flickered brightly and then dimmed and obeyed him.  
  
Bones shoved the feeling of disappointment ruthlessly out of his mind when Jim smiled at him with his blanket slung over his shoulder and the unspoken request to come inside. “Idiot,” he said but he didn’t know who he was talking about.  
  
\--  
  
There was no rain in space. Bones had gone looking for it plenty, lost count of how many days they were floating ever closer to earth. (Soon, Jim said, they’d be there soon.) There was no rain and no meatloaf and no long hours of the day spent staring out the windows wondering if this class was ever going to be over and why they were bothering to teach him pointless shit. He was a doctor not a damn public-relations representative.   
  
There were too many Vulcans standing around looking placid and calm. There were too many crewmembers milling around trying to make themselves as useful as possible, working with little to no sleep and too confused or worried to do anything about it. Bones thought that made sense; he didn’t know what to do about sleeping either. Jim’s snoring was about the only thing that let him stop thinking.  
  
“You think,” Jim whispered to him one of the nights, “They’ll forget about the Kobayashi Maru?”  
  
Bones snorted. “Yeah, Jim, I think they might.”   
  
He woke up dreaming about Spock, about the look on his face when he had pulled himself away from Jim, about how his words hadn’t been clear and toneless but almost broken and stumbling— And umbrellas, he dreamed about umbrellas and rain.  
  
\--  
  
Worrying never made anything better. Worrying made things worse; clung to him until he couldn’t shake it and he had convinced himself five times that he didn’t care and wasn’t going to bother with it. Worry always won, Bones could blame that on being a good doctor—just checking up on his patients.  
  
Spock waited by the biobed calmly, as if he had settled in himself how his mother had died and his species was on the brink of extinction—yes, that was all logical, moving on was logical. Lingering, mourning, wishing for rain and whiskey—that wasn’t logical at all.   
  
“I assure you that if my injury had been aggravated in any way or had failed to heal as expected I would have returned to Sickbay, doctor.”  
  
So what did Bones say to that? I think I hate you, you rotten pointy-eared bastard but I can’t shake this feeling that you’re not half as alright as you think. It wasn’t his fucking concern anyway; Spock had made a decision months ago who he was going to share his umbrella with and only silly little girls thought that sex meant attachment. Spock was—just an asshole who hurt Bones’ best friend.  
  
“I’m the doctor,” he said, because he could say that. Here, in Sickbay, where their uniform shirts were the same color. “I’ll decide for myself whether your healing  _as expected_  or not.” He ran the tricorder while Spock waited and frowned at the results. “How are you sleeping?”  
  
“Primarily on my right side,” Spock answered.  
  
Smart ass. Bones glared at him. “I meant; are you sleeping as much as you should?”  
  
“Ah.” That wasn’t a response, neither was: “I am adequately rested.” Yeah, sure he wasn’t. Bones motioned him to take his shirt off and Spock obediently pulled them over his head. “Are you achieving optimal rest, doctor?”  
  
No. Not even a little.   
  
\--  
  
It turned out to be a Thursday when Jim got his fancy medals. Bones slapped him on the back because he deserved it—maybe. Too many nights without sleep left him without any idea what he thought anyone deserved exactly. And he was back to wearing red instead of blue, standing around a horde of cadets that had been too young to be sent off to their doom.  
  
The Academy had held a mass memorial service while they were floating out in space, voted and decided upon a monument of some kind to honor the fallen. It was all done before they got back, neatly packaged and pushed aside, no need to worry about those poor idiots that were lost in space and how they needed the closure.  
  
But that was alright, they had some nice lady with a pointy noise and strange eyes grill him on his mental state until he was exhausted and Bones had no idea if he passed or failed or if he cared. He had three days off and a little bottle of pills that were supposed to make him sleep.   
  
Jim had the Enterprise and a grin that wouldn’t fade until long after the stream of congratulations ebbed and they found themselves out on the steps of the Academy looking out at the campus and then it faded, at last. Jim licked his lips and looked at him. “I couldn’t have done it without you, Bones.” That was about as close to thanks as Jim had gotten in the three years Bones had known him. “You’re coming with me, right?”  
  
“Sure, Jim,” he said. “Someone’s got to keep you from doing dumbass things.”  
  
\--  
  
Edna’s hadn’t forgotten about him, they were just surprised to see him on a Friday. They served him up a heaping plate for free and added in a milkshake because he was looking peaked and needed fattening up.   
  
“What was it like?” the pretty waitress asked him. Her hand was on his shoulder the whole time, leaning in close to hear him but he didn’t have an answer for her. So she talked, told him about when the drill, about the news, about the memorial—oh it was a great affair and she’d wept and wept and then she was gone to attend to other customers.   
  
He ate as much as his stomach could stand and promised he’d be back on Tuesday like always while they wished him well. Bones walked because the sun was low and the sky was dark, the wind was cool and real. No metal walls, no black blanket of space, nothing but the real solid earth around him. The smells of life—grass and food and dirt and brick—   
  
He found his way to a bench and sat for a while, just watching the world move and he felt better. Almost, as better as he thought he was supposed to feel. He felt like he could sort out how he felt about things now, about men and women he couldn’t save, about watching a horde of stone faced Vulcans with minor injuries and blank emotions comforting one another with logic.  
  
That night he almost slept.  
  
\--  
  
The rain came Saturday night, a spattering of sprinkles at first, little drips and drops that sizzled on the bonfire that really wasn’t. The hippies wanted to dance in it; the few cadets that had been trying to go on without their missing friends took it as an excuse to leave. The man with the guitar said he didn’t want it to get ruined and slowly, one by one, the crowd was gone.  
  
Bones was there when it the downpour came, all at once, the sky seemed to break open and the rain came heavy and cool. That was nice, on his back, his neck, his hair, slipping over his face, across his lips, on his hands, soaking him straight through the shirt.  
  
“I have come to accept that I will never understand human behavior,” Spock said. He was there in front of him, no umbrella, and his perfectly straight hair stuck to his forehead.   
  
“I never asked you to,” Bones shot back. He pushed himself up to stand, shivered at the water wriggling down under his collar, wetting his chest and down his belly. “Where’s Uhura?”  
  
“I am uncertain as to the exact location of Cadet Uhura,” Spock said.   
  
“Alright,” Bones agreed. “Where’s your umbrella? Forget to watch the weather report today?”  
  
Spock thought about that for a moment, water ran down his nose and dripped off his chin, made the his shirt stick tight across his shoulders and arms, he didn’t smile or frown or outwardly make an expression at all. “It would seem I did,” he agreed. “Perhaps it would be advisable to seek shelter?”  
  
“I don’t mind the rain,” Bones said.   
  
“I see.” Spock turned to go, to seek shelter from the rain and that was all very logical too. No reason to stand out in the rain with an idiot human that didn’t have the sense to protect himself from the rain.   
  
“I’m sorry about your mother,” Bones called before he lost his nerve. Thought he wanted to say something about how he knew what it felt like—maybe, how his father had died because Bones made the wrong decision, how his mother had died years before that. He wanted to tell Spock that eventually it didn’t hurt so much and sometimes you forgot that you missed them.  
  
Spock stopped long enough to incline his head once. “Thank you, doctor.”  
  
\--  
  
The walk back to campus was long and wet, his boots squished with every step until he thought that just taking them off would make more sense and he was padding barefoot across the muddy grass to the steps of the dorm building. Picking his way across the smooth stone walkway and found himself stopping short in front of the steps. Spock pushed himself up to stand from where he had been sitting.   
  
“What about Uhura?” Bones asked this time because he should have asked the last time.  
  
“Cadet Uhura and I have no formal understanding,” Spock said.  
  
That didn’t mean shit; it wasn’t an answer at all. He opened his mouth to tell the pointy eared bastard that—and how he wasn’t just some cheap fuck and then there was the way that Spock looked used and wet like a beaten dog and Bones just huffed. “Whatever, come on.” He entered the code at the door and went up the stairs instead of the lift because nobody ever took the stairs. It was cold inside, he was shivering long before they were safe inside of his dorm, door closed behind them and the space between them wide and expansive and yet barely enough room to breathe.  
  
“You want something to drink?” he asked as he pulled his clothes off and threw them over the desk chair. He had goose bumps that crawled on his skin and a shiver that ran down his spine and Spock had to be colder than him but he didn’t move. “What are you here for?”  
  
“I—” Spock stopped. “I am not certain.”  
  
Bones could understand that, he didn’t know why the hell he’d let him come up. So he went with what he did know, pulled the zipper on Spock’s uniform straight down and peeled it over his shoulder and down his arms while that even pat of breath tickled at his scalp. Wound his fingers in the flimsy black shirt under that one and worked it up, off of Spock’s hot skin and over his head. When he touched him, Spock gasped.  
  
“Sorry,” he thought to say—his head was full of his father, his mother, confusion and tumbling thoughts he hadn’t settled yet.   
  
“Please do not be,” Spock mumbled into his lips as he caught Bones by the face and pressed their mouths together. So they shared his thoughts, his reassurances, and his empathy for what he wanted to believe Spock felt. They shared the ragged pull of breath and the soft touch of tongues, everything tasted like rain water and salt, everything moved with a slip except Spock’s pants that refused to be moved with anything less than a shove.  
  
Bones moved them this time, arms around Spock’s shoulders while he sat on the bed, and his long fingers were still, simply following the roll of Bones’ hips as he took Spock in and rode him. Every muscle tired and shaking when Spock tightened his grip and pulled him down, shuddered against him with a barely heard gasp and Bones kissed the tip of his ear because it was there—exhausted and silly, sloppy thoughts in his head about how he was sorry, just that, sorry that it had to happen to Spock, how it fucking sucked, how it shouldn’t have been, how if Bones could have done anything to change it he would have while he stroked his hand down Spock’s back.   
  
Spock didn’t look at him, kept his face against Bones’ shoulder or cheek to cheek with his—but he wound his arms around him and held him there. Bones thought maybe—maybe Spock wanted to have the excuse feel this, the pain and regret and the anger that it shouldn’t have fucking happened. It wasn’t Spock’s pain if it started in Bones’ mind, so it was safe to feel.   
  
Bones didn’t say sorry again, just let his thoughts loose, let them run and twist and hurt until he was exhausted.   
  
\--  
  
Bones woke up alone, to a wash of sunshine that made the whole room glow. His body was sore and achy and his head hurt as he dragged himself up to check the time, decided he didn’t need to get up and pulled the blankets back over his head.  
  
Jim was there a few hours later, wiggling under his blankets with his breath stinking like coffee made too strong. “It stinks in here,” was his complaint, like he had any right to complain about the state of Bones’ bed sheets. “Like, dick.”   
  
“It didn’t before you got here,” Bones said.  
  
Jim laughed and pulled the blankets down so their heads were free, it didn’t smell any better but it was a lot brighter. And there was a bag with a doughnut in it and a tall cup of coffee waiting for him should he decide to rise from the dead. “Are you naked?”  
  
“I wasn’t expecting company.”  
  
“You are,” Jim shouted. He was always too loud and too invasive, yanking at Bones’ covers to steal looks that he damn well didn’t ask for. It just amused the shit out of him, really. “Did you get laid? Do I know them? Boy or a girl?”  
  
Head under the blankets was so much better than this. Bones just pointed at the food and the coffee until Jim handed it over. “A gentleman never tells,” Bones answered.  
  
Jim rolled his eyes. “You’re my CMO. It’s all official now.”  
  
Great.  
  
“At least tell me if it was a boy or a girl,” Jim said.   
  
Bones just rolled his eyes. “This is sexual harassment, Jim, you might want to brush up on that. And it’s none of your damn business.”


	4. Chasing Reason

There was, Spock could admit, a certain lack of logic to his present situation. He considered, briefly, the long-argued private debate regarding acknowledging his emotions and simply ignoring them. In all his years of struggle he had never successfully subdued his emotions to the level of peace that his father could attain. He could not detach himself so fully from his human side so as to find serenity and peace in logic. It merely, at this time, afforded him the ability to suffocate his emotions in submission so as to think without feeling.  
  
Except, currently, of course. Spock had been pacing the halls in an attempt to exhaust his body into the obedience that his mind would not concede to him. In this attempt he had aggravated both his mental condition and his physical one. What he assumed to be a bruise with very little underlying damage on his upper back was aching in a way that could be ignored no easier than he could successfully ignore the reoccurring thoughts of his status as an endangered species and a mourning son.   
  
When he was still, he thought of his mother and how he had let go of her hand before she died. There was no use in replaying the scene in his head because the outcome was ultimately the same. Still, when he was not in motion or occupied, he thought of her. He thought of the ledge that had fallen away under her. He thought of the sympathy and the stares that followed him.  
  
Nyota had offered comfort as human kisses and he had indulged them because they had soothed him at the time. When the moment passed she felt as if he would offer her more and he understood now—as he stood—that he had been mistaken to allow them.  
  
Now he stood in front of a door and pressed the chime and did not understand how his feet had brought him here or what logic commanded him to remain. This man had been nothing more glorious than a one-night stand that had not spoken a single word of civility to him since. In truth, he had not spoken many words of civility before. Nor had he offered his name as an invitation to use it in place of his title. Furthermore, he was closely acquainted with the acting captain, Kirk. He had chosen to protect Kirk even before this in an instance that could have cost him his career in Starfleet. That level of devotion and attachment surely negated any attachment they might have formed as sexual partners.  
  
If it were only sex there was no reason to be standing here—unless Spock craved sexual gratification and that was not a pressing need at this time. Rather, he was uncertain as to what his need was and therefore had less reason to remain here. He watched the door for another matter of seconds and was sure that his chime would go unanswered before he turned to leave. His back ached and he felt that perhaps that was what brought him to the doctor’s quarters as the man was the last full physician on board.   
  
The door opened behind him and the doctor stepped into the hallway with his eyes squinting at the brightness of the corridor lights. “What?”  
  
Spock looked at him for a moment and considered complete honesty.  _I do not know why I sought you out,_  before deciding that it would do them no good. “I did not mean to wake you, I apologize, Doctor,” was honesty as well. Then he turned and continued down the hall.  
  
\--  
  
Spock visited Sickbay when he had the opportunity the next day. The Doctor greeted him in much the same way that he had always greeted him, with a sneer that bordered on dislike and a rude attempt at formality with: “What is it?”  
  
Spock stood up from the bed he had been told to wait on and pulled his shirts over his head. It was easier and more efficient to remove them both at once. The air was quite chilly and his back had a sharp discomfort from the motion and the friction of the shirts being moved across it. He straightened his uniform and set it aside and did not allow the memories of their recent sexual encounter to cloud his mind as it would be inappropriate. “I believe I sustained the injury while attempting to rescue the High Council on Vulcan.” He turned around and placed his hands on the top of the biobed.  
  
“Damn,” the Doctor sighed. He spent a moment to stare at what must have been an unsightly injury before speaking again. “Why’d you wait so long to come see me?”  
  
“The injury is not life-threatening, doctor.”  
  
There was the whirr of the tricorder working to detect the status of his body and the sound of the Doctor grinding his teeth in annoyance of his continued ignorance of Spock’s normal status. It undoubtedly caused him some great frustration when it was his duty to know such things and certainly he felt that Spock had intentionally been born as a half-breed if only to make his life and job more complicated. “Does it hurt?” was the only warning that the Doctor offered before his bare fingertips were brushing across the tight and swollen skin of Spock’s back.  
  
It felt—unbelievably—like kisses. The sort of comforting gesture that a Vulcan mother might have offered a very young child when they were hurt and too small to comfort themselves. Spock thought of his own mother. He thought of the ledge as it crumbled. He thought of the moment when his hand had loosened from hers.  
  
“It is uncomfortable.”  
  
Something in the words offended the Doctor and Spock could not bring himself to attempt to reason out what. He was, quite simply, too tired to make reason of the chaos that determined this man every action. A single sexual encounter did not allow him enough insight to draw logical conclusions so he did not attempt to do as much. Instead he stood quietly until the Doctor was satisfied that his work had been done and he ignored the catches and slips of sympathy and weariness that bled through the accidental and purposeful touches of their skin.  
  
“Thank you, doctor,” Spock said it was finished and he left.  
  
\--  
  
Nyota came to him in the evening. Her expectation was that she would offer him comfort in whatever manner he would take it. She believed that some manner of sexual contact would allow him peace and he was content to sit with her on the small couch that was in the sitting area of his quarters. She had her legs under her and her hand on the back of his neck.  
  
Her fingernails were hard but she moved them gently across his skin as she toyed with the hair on the nape of his neck. They did not speak because he was uncertain how to explain that he was not sexually attracted to her without incurring either sympathy or wrath when he could not have appropriately reacted to either. The silence was not at ease between them but it was at least tolerable and her thoughts were whispers of comfort. She loved him, as wholly and completely as she was able. It was an emotion that was warm where others were often jagged and painful.   
  
“Nyota,” he said at last.  
  
“Shh,” she said back before he was able to explain himself. Her palm was on his face again and she was kissing him with a tremble. It was not logical. It did not make sense. Her love was a quivering heat that fell through him where he was cold and tired. “It’s okay,” she told him, “I know.”   
  
Truthfully, as she put her arm around his shoulders and laid her body against his side, she understood. She knew before he had told her as much but she still loved him, perhaps futility, the same as she had before. Her fingers found the hair above his ear and stroked it, he put his arm around her and accepted what she offered because he could not find a reason not to do so.  
  
\--  
  
Dr. McCoy, acting Chief Medical Officer and the only licensed physician on the ship, ordered him to report to Sickbay at his earliest convenience. Spock assumed that it was nothing more than to check the progressing of his injury. As it was healing as expected he gave some thought to simply replying to the summons with a message stating such. However, he found himself in Sickbay.  
  
He said: “I assure you that if my injury had been aggravated in any way or had failed to heal as expected I would have returned to Sickbay, doctor.” Perhaps as a means to stall any further need for conversation that would be a waste of their time.  
  
As always, the Doctor took his attempt to spare them both the hassle of being forced into a shared space as an insult. Spock was starting to believe that short of the acting Captain there wasn’t a man alive that could speak to the Doctor without offending him in some manner and resolved not to put so much effort into keeping his comments neutral and impartial.   
  
“I’m the doctor,” he said loudly and with a certain unreasonable vindictiveness. “I’ll decide for myself whether your healing  _as expected_  or not.” He ran the tricorder while Spock waited and frowned at the results. “How are you sleeping?”  
  
Spock considered this. “ _Primarily_  on my right side.”  
  
That was a petty statement when he very much understood what the Doctor was asking. There were things in his mind that made no sense to him—senseless death, bloodlust, anger, hate, sorrow and loneliness—he found that the Doctor aggravated them because he preceded them. He had been the first to dismiss Spock as if he were nothing but a  _one night stand_ , his behavior made no sense in any context.  
  
“I meant: are you sleeping as much as you should?”  
  
“Ah.” Yes, he knew that. “I am adequately rested.” At least as rested as was necessary to continue functioning at a reasonable level of efficiency. Then, perhaps as an act of apology or as some humans still said, an olive branch he said: “Are you achieving optimal rest, doctor?”  
  
The Doctor snorted as if it were an answer and considered their discussion concluded.  
  
\--  
  
Spock met himself by accident when he was looking for his father. Sarek had not spoken to him at length since Nero had been destroyed once and for all. As his father had never spoken to him at length, it should not have been significantly troubling but he did not wish to part ways again without wishing his father well. When he saw the tall Vulcan with the graying hair he had assumed it was his father by the similarity of statue and posture.  
  
Instead, an older version of himself stood before him and said confusing things about the future this other Vulcan knew as the past. He spoke with respect of a man named James Kirk who was his  _friend_. It was confusing at best and Spock might have argued that their lives would not follow the same paths. There was no predicting the course that his life would take and there was no sense in following a man that did not particularly like him into space when his species was at the brink of extinction.  
  
This other self urged him, however, to remain. He promised that he would make efforts to ensure their species’ continued survival. With his advanced knowledge, there was little point in arguing that he, a mere child by Vulcan standards, could offer better assistance. The woman that would have been his wife was dead and as a half-breed he could not even contribute children to the re-establishment of the species.  
  
Spock did not make a decision, rather accepted the one that was given to him for a moment. It pleased this other self as if he had made right some small part of what had been made wrong by his unintentional interference.  
  
\--  
  
Nyota found his apartment and stood outside his door until he returned. She wore her cadet’s uniform still and he let her in without questioning her presence. When she touched him her mind was filled with sorrow and sympathy that was soft and suffocating.  
  
“You need someone,” she whispered to him when they were standing at the counter in his small kitchen. “Anyone, Spock. If not me then someone—” When she touched his hand again it was full and bright with unconditional love.   
  
He closed his eyes because if he did not look at her, he thought, he could feel something he remembered from his childhood. But her mind was not his mother’s and he was not the child he had been.  
  
\--  
  
It was a Saturday, in the rain, when he found the Doctor. It was out in the field where they had often played music and danced shoeless in the dirt. Spock had not intentionally come to be here, rather he had started to walk hours ago and found himself here, now.  
  
When he said: “I have come to accept that I will never understand human behavior,” he meant it as much for himself as for the Doctor standing in the rain as if it brought him some solace and relief.   
  
The rain was cold and heavy and soaked through his clothing in a matter of seconds. The Doctor looked at him with a strange mix of pity and annoyance as he tried to wipe his mouth with his wet hand and found it covered in water again. “I never asked you too,” as he stood and motioned at him. “Where’s Uhura?”  
  
“I am uncertain as to the exact location of Cadet Uhura,” Spock said.   
  
  
“Alright,” the Doctor said as if he were agreeing to some unspoken pact regarding ignorance. “Where’s your umbrella? Forget to watch the weather report today?”  
  
No. His two umbrellas were next to his door—forgotten as his logic and common sense. He had walked without reason for hours searching for peace and finding only more questions. Every question he answered brought him another until he conceded that he could find no logic in cruelty or revenge. His mother and his planet had died for reasons that he could not explain and he was now faced with the decision to accept it or to remain forever in a spiral of searching for meaning.  
  
Logic would not offer him comfort now. Sarek must have known this when he advised Spock not to control his emotions but rather to embrace them. Revenge beget revenge because thinking beings were often petty in that manner. Spock had watched Nero die and felt nothing. The act was senseless and it did not revive his mother nor restore Vulcan.  
  
“It would seem,” he said at length, “I did.” Then, “Perhaps it would be advisable to seek shelter?”  
  
“I don’t mind the rain,” the Doctor said. But not, I do not want your company.  
  
“I see.” Spock said as he turned to go. There were still miles to walk and many thoughts he had not brought to their conclusion. He was several steps away, picking up mud with his boots when the Doctor spoke again.  
  
“I’m sorry about your mother.”  
  
Yes. Everyone was.  
  
\--  
  
Spock knew, of course, that he was waiting on the steps of the dormitory that the Doctor most likely resided in. He was not certain and therefore could fool himself, however briefly, into believing that it was not intentional. It was as if he were a child and he could fool himself into believing that he had not behaved illogically when he struck the other boys for their cruel words. He could make himself believe that the act was logical because it was a matter of morals and honor when he knew all the while that it was a response to emotional stimuli.  
  
They had called his mother a whore and Spock was well aware of what such women were. His mother was not so base or so filthy and he would not allow them to speak of her in such ways. But he could convince himself, for a matter of seconds, that it was not because of her but rather that they disrespected their own kind by using such language and being so petty that he struck them.  
  
He had very nearly fooled himself into believing he was not waiting for the Doctor but merely resting when the man stopped short only a few feet from him. Then the charade was pointless because they were both aware of his needs. So he waited to be told to excuse himself for the things that he had done to the Doctor’s friend, Kirk, and not to return.   
  
It was, Spock deduced, the only reason the Doctor had to send him away save for a lack of sexual attraction. As they had had a pleasing sexual encounter previously, he felt that would not be an issue.  
  
“What about Uhura?” the Doctor asked.  
  
“Cadet Uhura and I have no formal understanding.”  
  
The Doctor made a face as if he did not believe or understand the words. Spock was attempting to be diplomatic and not outright say that he didn’t return Nyota’s obvious affection for him simply because he was primarily attracted to members of his own sex, primarily  _Human_  males. Nyota and himself were perhaps the only ones that were fully aware of his preference and it was a shameful enough secret that he kept it to himself.  
  
“Whatever,” the Doctor said and the answer was good enough for the moment, “Come on.” They entered through the door and made their way through the corridors to the Doctor’s room. He pulled his own clothes off with shivering hands as he offered something to drink that he did not seem to expect Spock to accept. Spock merely stood and watched the man strip and willed his body to react with carnal interest. His body was willing but his mind was still chasing reason and logic with the persistent desperation of a child. “What are you here for?” seemed too perceptive to have been the Doctor.  
  
“I—I am not certain.”  
  
So this man, this strange human man that outwardly liked nobody and offered no sympathy but only cures from a hypospray looked at him as if he understood. Perhaps he could understand, perhaps he knew what it was like to have a mind that refused to still and no peace to find. When he touched him it was with acknowledgement of unknown and emotions that were too large and too layered to have names to fit. He was practical in his motions, removing Spock’s professor’s shirt and then his black undershirt. Then his hand felt against Spock’s chest and the strange emotion that encompassed him had a name.  
  
It was  _despair_.  
  
“Sorry,” the Doctor said. Perhaps for the coolness of his hand, perhaps for the fullness of his thoughts, perhaps for offering a name to a feeling that seemed to stretch as wide as their bodies and envelope them both. Here, with the hand against his chest, he understood what Nyota said when she told him to find somebody.  
  
It could not have been her and he understood why she felt remorse and regret at being unable to offer him what she felt he needed.  
  
“Please,” Spock said when they were close enough the water from the Doctor’s face was against his mouth, “do not be.”  
  
Then they came together and it was a twist of emotion and action. Their breath was ragged as if they were already engaged in coitus and yet it was as if they were crying as their mouths pressed together. It was not a kiss that Spock had ever shared with anyone because it was as much between their mouths as it was between their minds. The Doctor had laid bare his whole soul with an odd lack of self-consciousness and he stood there with his hands on Spock’s shoulders shivering from chill and without shame.   
  
These were the things that he felt and he was fiercely proud of feeling them, of having names for them, for having memories that brought them out in his mind. They exhausted him and he exalted in them because they meant that he was alive and whole and  _good_. Men such as Nero did not feel these things because they were evil men with blackened souls that were broke in ways that twisted them.   
  
Then the Doctor was pulling him closer, stripping him of his clothes. He was pushing him until Spock was sitting and cold hands were rubbing something slick against him. It was not any marketed source of lubricant but the Doctor told him not to worry, whispered  _shhh_  at him as he sat in his lap. His knees dug into the bed hard on either side of Spock as the Doctor brought himself down and took Spock into his body.   
  
His every thought was another lick of warmth that wasn’t love but that same fierce pride for  _feeling_  and it was so strange but it covered them. Spock could only hold onto his body as it moved—aware of the arms across his shoulder, aware that this was slow and painful because their breath tasted like human tears. The pain was not physical but deep under their skin so when the Doctor kissed his ear his thoughts were apologies and curses and sympathy that was as empathy as if the Doctor could understand. It was regret and fury and the useless thought that if it could have been prevented then this man would do whatever he could. That this should never happen to anyone and that it  _fucking sucked_  to have happened to him.  
  
Spock tipped his head, cheek-against-cheek with the Doctor and wrapped his arms around him. He wished—and such things were largely pointless—that the man could hear his thoughts whispering thank-you and please-do-not stop. He wanted to feel this, he wanted to explore the depth of this  _despair_  so he could put it away and be done with it. The Doctor put his arms around him tighter, as if he heard or perhaps just surmised, and he loosened all the restraints he had on his own thoughts and emotions.  
  
He was completely and utterly naked against Spock and he felt no shame and no regret. He offered the safety of his humanity and Spock held him tighter and pressed his face against his shoulder and he thought that he must have cried and for then—if only while he was wrapped up in this—he was not shamed.  
  
\--  
  
Nyota approached him at his apartment in the days that followed. She touched his face in a way that was becoming familiar and expected and looked into his eyes as if she could sense his thoughts from the gesture. Her smile was full of sorrow but her lips against his were full of gratefulness. She could not keep herself from asking him: “who was it?” even as she pulled her hand and her prickling curiosity away from him.  
  
“I am uncertain of the nature of your query,” he said.  
  
“Who did you have sex with?” she asked him. The words were blunt because she felt that he would not deny having sexual intercourse with someone but correctly guessed that he would not freely discuss any other aspect of the encounter.   
  
“It was the Doctor,” he said.  
  
“McCoy?” she asked him, “Kirk’s best friend?” Spock nodded his head and she stared at him strangely for a moment. “Is—is he the same cadet you were with before?”  
  
“Yes,” Spock said. Although he did not believe that this encounter would result in any further such incidents. He had excused himself when the Doctor fell asleep when his emotions and body were exhausted. It was the etiquette he had learned through repetition in such situations. “I have become aware that you were selected to serve aboard the Enterprise and I wished to extend my congratulations to you for the placement.”  
  
“You’re going to be on the crew too, aren’t you?” she asked. Then her hand was on her hip as she looked at him. “Spock. Don’t leave me up in space with  _Jim Kirk_.”  
  
Naturally, he could do no such thing.


	5. Empty Shelves

There were five shelves and every possession that Bones had in the world could only fill two of them. It just about summed the whole fucking ridiculous situation up nicely, he thought. Two antique medical texts, a picture of his daughter, a toy rainbow pony that Joanna insisted he take with him, a jar of old coins that had been his father’s. There was the wooden box with the moon and stars burnt into the top—he barely remembered what was in it but he set it on the third shelf by itself and the decanter of whiskey on the forth shelf so it wouldn’t look so empty.   
  
Then he stood there and looked at it and wondered what it said about him. He told himself that people were almost more important than things and that was why he didn’t have enough shit to fill a set of shelves (and that worked so long as he didn’t go off thinking too hard about how he could count his friends on a single hand).  
  
\--  
  
“You look like shit,” Jim said and slapped him on the back in that way that Jim thought was affectionate. Someone should have told him that affectionate slaps weren’t meant to leave red welts. Bones might have bothered if he didn’t figure that Jim would launch into an explanation of how not everyone had baby fine skin like poor precious Leonard McCoy. “Where have you been anyway?”  
  
It was breakfast time in the mess hall, the light was bright as the dawn and the air was growing warm around them. Temperature modulation and mood lighting were all standard procedure to allow idiots like him to adjust to being in space without losing their minds. Soon enough that would fade away and everything would be a crisp degree above chilly and the lights would be serviceably bright at all times. “Working,” Bones mumbled back. He took Jim’s coffee because the replicator always gave him tea.  
  
Must have been some sort of demographic bullshit and it was what he got for not caring enough to pick his own menu in detail. Sure, he liked tea—fresh tea, real tea, tea left sitting in glass jars steeping in the sun and sweetened until it was almost too sugary. A little lemon floating over the ice. Replicator tea wasn’t the same.   
  
“Why the hell did you schedule yourself on the nightshift?” Jim asked. “You’re the  _Chief_  Medical Officer, Bones. That means you’re the boss.”  
  
Boss, that was a funny word. He’d remember to tell that to the crew that had been working on Starships longer than he’d been divorced and they might even have themselves a real polite laugh at his expense. “I’ll run Sickbay how I want to,” he said back. When the coffee was gone he set the mug back on Jim’s tray. “You worry about everything else.”  
  
\--  
  
The first away mission was a bloody fucking disaster. Someone died, Jim came back with a sucking chest wound, coated in his own blood, one of his eyes swollen shut and Spock all but throwing him into Bones’ arms in Sickbay like he’d never met anyone so incompetent in his life.  
  
There wasn’t time to ask questions, there was time for surgery and miracles. Chapel was the nurse on duty, she wiped his forehead when the sweat poured down out of his hair without a word about how he wanted to do it like that—no, like that, no if he would just—fuck all of them. Bones shouted at the doctors that knew more than he did because they’d seen it twice and sent them out of the Sickbay and told them not to fucking come back.  
  
Hours later when he was sitting at Jim’s bedside wearing too-loose scrubs because his uniform had been soaked in blood, he couldn’t even summon up enough energy to be surprised when Spock appeared at the edge of his vision. Complaints against senior officers always found their way to the Captain and if the Captain was unconscious the First Officer would have to do.  
  
“I know,” he said to Spock before he could open his mouth.  
  
Spock nodded. “There are no formal written complaints against you at this time, Doctor. However, I caution you against allowing your emotions to get the best of you.” They never talked about it, how they’d had sex, how Spock had held onto him and let Bones cry for him, but it was always there in the silence. “I expect the Captain will make a full recovery?” Spock asked as an afterthought.  
  
“Yeah,” Bones said.  
  
\--  
  
“I got this for you,” Jim said after the third away mission. He’d come back in one piece, not so much as a hint of violence on that trip. It was nothing special, delivering some supplies to a perfectly peaceful planet and picking up a shipment that needed to be handed off to a freighter on its way back to earth.  
  
Bones looked up from where he was face down on the bed, arms and head hanging off the end, pouring himself another shot of whiskey. “This one of them jokes where I stick my hand in your pocket and find your dick?”  
  
Jim giggled when he was drunk, stupid little laughs that chortled into the air. He was straddling the corner of Bones’ desk, shot glass between his thighs and fingers dipping into the alcohol with no particular emotion at all. Stress, maybe, poor kid was just now figuring out what the hell he’d done to himself. “Shit, Bones,” he said, “You would fall for that.”  
  
Probably, at least once.   
  
“No,” Jim said to his own thoughts, lapping the whiskey off the backs of his fingers as the fat drops slid down toward his wrist. “For your shelves.” He groped around his pockets, dug his hand down inside and pulled out a flat black square. A little drunk fumbling and then a hologram popped up of a beating heart. Wasn’t human, whatever it was, it flickered as Jim stood up and moved over to put it on his shelf next to the wooden box. “Looks better.”  
  
“Thanks,” Bones mumbled at him.  
  
\--  
  
Bones didn’t like swing shift, he didn’t particularly like his staff—except maybe Chapel, she was nice. She was new like him. Not brand new but new enough that she didn’t think she could tell him what to do and how he was doing it wrong all under the guise of  _helping him find his way_  with a sweet little  _sir_  on the end that made it all better. You could say whatever the fuck you wanted in Starfleet as long as you remembered to tack  _sir_  on the end.  
  
I think you’re a fucking bastard that should have gotten demoted to ass-wiper,  _sir_.  
  
Swing shift made him cranky; it was that part of the day better spent napping than working. He got bored sitting around Sickbay reading regulations, waiting for someone to get hurt, always wandered away but there was nowhere to go. A whole fucking ship and nowhere to go.  
  
Except Engineering, sometimes he wandered into Engineering and found Scotty sweet talking the warp drives and bickering with Keenser. Odd couple those two—always entertaining, good for a quick, awkward kind of laugh.  
  
Mostly Bones paced Sickbay. Sometimes he spun the chair behind the desk until he was dizzy.  
  
\--  
  
“Take it off,” Bones barked at him— “Nurse!” Chapel was good (he really liked her, wanted to keep her around, kept fucking up her schedule to keep her on the shift with him) she was already bringing him the hypospray and the dermal regenerator.  
  
Spock wasn’t hissing, wasn’t groaning, wasn’t cursing under his breath as he tried to peel the ripped and melted shirt off. No, of course he wasn’t. Damn fucking stoic Vulcans. Bones turned his head to shout for scissors and Chapel was already there.  
  
“Hold still,” Bones said, caught the bottom edge of the shirts and split them straight up the middle, dropped the scissors on the bed as he peeled the shirt back off Spock’s burnt arms, Chapel was there to ease it around his back and Bones pulled it off his other arm. “What the hell happened?” he demanded.  
  
Spock’s teeth were clenched too tight to answer, the burns were white around the edges, bleeding green in the center.   
  
“This’ll knock you out,” Bones said and jabbed the hypospray into his neck.  
  
\--  
  
“Is he going to be alright?” Jim asked because he had more guilt than he’d ever admit to. He asked with his back stiff and his lips pressed tight together. Bones nodded and sent him on his way.  
  
“Is he going to be ok?” Uhura asked because she was Spock’s girlfriend and she could shed those pretty little tears at the corner of her eyes when she saw him stretched out, unconscious on the bed. She didn’t and Bones couldn’t figure out if he was relieved or surprised by her emotional control.   
  
Spock wasn’t dying, he wasn’t in any danger of dying but she wouldn’t know that just looking at him. Bones didn’t know her, he knew that it was none of his business when she ran her hand down Spock’s slack face and bent to kiss the corner of his mouth. Maybe she whispered something sweet and endearing there, maybe she was urging him to wake up with her thoughts.  
  
Maybe he had no right at all to wonder.   
  
“Thank you, Dr. McCoy,” she said before she had to get back to her shift.  
  
He nodded at her and didn’t think (I fucked your boyfriend) because that was all past tense.  
  
\--  
  
Bones was there when Jim made the flippant remark, something about “Well, that doesn’t matter, does it?” something that Jim must have said so many times in his life he forgot that sometimes things matter a hell of a fucking lot. Spock had been there too; too Vulcan to roll his eyes and drop his face into his palm but the tightness of his shoulders was just about the same effect.  
  
Bones had never been electrocuted before. Hours later when the Priestess must have gotten tired of listening to them screaming and Jim had babbled an apology from his split open lips; they were three crispy, strange smelling critters sitting around Sickbay while his lovely staff mumbled among themselves.   
  
“You suck as a Captain,” Bones said to Jim at his left.  
  
Spock at his right turned his head as far as he could without causing himself pain. “Once again,” he said dryly, “I urge you to think carefully and thoroughly before you speak.”  
  
“She was just a sadistic bitch,” Jim said, shoulders sagging and glaring over at the doctors that were arguing about what hypospray they wanted to use first. “Your staff sucks,” Jim said.  
  
Yeah. Sometimes they did. Bones tried to lick his lips but there was no spit in his mouth. “I can fix that.” He shoved himself up again, every inch of his body creaked and hurt, he felt burnt, hot, beaten and rubbery but he damn well knew what the fuck he was doing.   
  
\--  
  
Bones never asked how Jim had figured out the code to the door, he didn’t figure it mattered much, thought he probably had override codes to the whole ship. He didn’t even sigh when Jim slid his arms around him and propped his chin on Bones’ shoulder to watch him in the mirror. Studious stare, just kind of grinning softly while Bones carefully combed his hair to the side.  
  
“You think Spock uses hair gel?” was a little whisper and a stupid question.  
  
“Why would he?” Bones said back. “He’s Vulcan, they’re hair is too logical to be disorderly.” He ran his hand across the still gel-damp hair in the front and then the comb again and was satisfied.   
  
Jim chuckled. “I guess,” and he leaned up against Bones’ back, scratchy gold shirt on his bare skin and kissed him. Months in space meant months without getting laid; there never had been any good boundaries between them but every day they got a little thinner and Jim got a little bolder.  
  
Bones shoved him back with his elbow. “Stop that.”  
  
“Kissing you?” Jim prompted. “We’re friends, it doesn’t mean anything.” Jim moved out of the bathroom first, dropped himself down onto Bones’ bed.   
  
“Does it ever mean anything to you?” Bones returned. He grabbed his socks and his boots and sat on the end of the bed where Jim could nudge him with his foot and watch him dusting off his foot before he pulled his sock on. “I thought you were going to brush up on your sexual harassment regulations.”  
  
“Yeah—yeah,” was no real answer. Jim looked at his mostly empty shelves and his smile slipped just a little. “I found out something interesting last night.”  
  
Oh, this would be something perfect, surely. Bones shoved his foot into his boot and waited to be regaled with Jim’s latest genius. “What?”  
  
“Uhura wasn’t assigned to the Enterprise, she convinced Spock to change her assignment from the Farragut to the Enterprise.” Only Jim would think that was interesting. Bones figured that it made perfect fucking sense, that woman had Spock curled around her fingers since the first day he’d met him. “What does she see in him anyway?”  
  
“Who knows?” Bones muttered.  
  
“Besides the stick up his ass—he’s strong,” Jim rubbed his throat when he said it. “He’s technically a genius.” Yes and technically smarter than Jim. “And apparently easy to train—you’d think she’d want someone that didn’t do whatever she told them to.”  
  
Bones stood up, ran his hand down the front of his pants. “Does it matter?”  
  
“She told him her name,” Jim retorted. “I tried for years to get her name and she never told me but he can call her that whenever he wants.”  
  
“Her name’s Nyota,” Bones said.  
  
“I know that but she didn’t  _tell me_  that,” Jim said. “It’s the principle of the thing.”  
  
Bones grabbed the black undershirt and pulled it on, stretched the collar so it wouldn’t mess up his hair and let Jim wiggle around in his impatience to be acknowledged. “Leave it alone, Jim,” he said. “Unless there’s a regulation saying they can’t be together, just leave it alone.”  
  
Jim huffed, rolled off the side of his bed and nudged a box with the toe of one of his boots. “Officially, Starfleet frowns on fraternizing between crewmembers, but if everyone’s happy it’s not a big deal. I damn well don’t want to deal with those two if anything goes wrong.” He waited while Bones pulled his blue shirt on and then stepped up and kissed him again, a chaste little thing. “I think you should reconsider blowing me, Bones.”  
  
“Get out of here.”  
  
Jim laughed and smacked his shoulder in that way he thought was affectionate.  
  
\--  
  
Away missions were always disasters anymore.  
  
One fucking minute, that was all he would have needed, one fucking minute. It wouldn’t have killed them, it wouldn’t have endangered their mission, it wouldn’t have interfered with their beloved Prime Directive—it wouldn’t have done anything, one fucking minute, sixty precious seconds and he could have saved a life, could have saved a father or brother or lover, a man that hadn’t been their enemy, a man that didn’t deserve to die.  
  
Jim pulled him away, his hand was rough, his arm was shivering with effort as he pulled Bones by the shoulders and he was calling for the Enterprise—beam us up—Bones watched the man gasping, shoulders shaking on the sandy dirt of this planet, the start of a seizure, it was going to kill him. Here, alone, in a field away from his family, the man was going to die.  
  
Then the man was gone—  
  
Everything was shining blue and gray as Bones twisted around, ducking out from under Jim’s arm and he grabbed him by the gold shirt, heard his communicator hit the ground and his boots as they stumbled, he heard the gasp of breath, he heard his own heartbeat. “I could have saved him,” he shouted at Jim. It’s what he did, he was a doctor—it was the only thing he’d ever been any damn good at. His fingers were twisting as best they could in tight cloth and Jim’s eyes were hard, without sympathy.  
  
“I had to make a decision,” Jim said back, low and dangerous. He held his hand up to the side, warding off well-intending intruders. Security maybe, there were rules here against attacking superior officers. Except Jim wasn’t superior in any definition of the word except that he’d kissed enough ass and impressed enough fools to get himself a real big toy to fuck with. “I’m the Captain, I have to make decisions.”  
  
“You made the wrong fucking one,” Bones snarled and shoved him back, watched him stumble before his shoulder hit a wall. “I could have saved him.  _You_  killed him.”  
  
“Go cool off,” Jim said. The Captain said.  
  
“Oh, go fuck yourself  _Captain_ ,” Bones shot back.   
  
\--  
  
It wasn’t surprising when Spock showed up at his door. Bones leaned against the frame and looked at him, stared at him, waited for him to start explaining how it was that Bones had broken regulations and how he was now removed from duty for the following amount of time. How lucky he was that once or twice he’d fucked Spock and that was the only thing keeping him out of the brig for assaulting the Captain.  
  
“Well?” he said because Spock seemed to be waiting for a cue.  
  
For that matter, he never had figured out why Spock was here when he’d been set to leave with the Vulcans before. Why he would chose to join Jim after everything that happened between them and—  
  
“I came to inform you that there has been no formal complaint filed against you. However, as assaulting the Captain is a serious offense, I would suggest you maintain a respectful and cautious distance.” Spock nodded once and then turned to leave.  
  
Uhura must be waiting for him.  
  
\--  
  
Jim didn’t come to see him for two days. When he finally came it was in the evening and he bothered to ring the chime before he came in. Bones stood in front of him; Jim sank his hands down into his pockets and waited for something he wasn’t going to get.  
  
The Captain killed an innocent man; Bones damn well wasn’t going to apologize for being angry about it. Fuck any rule that told him he should.  
  
“I’m this close,” Jim said and held up his fingers, a fraction of a centimeter apart, “To losing the Enterprise, Bones.”  
  
Imagine that, someone finally figured out that a fucking twenty five year old couldn’t hold this ship together when the veterans were being bossed by the rookies and everyone that thought they were going into space with an experienced Captain got the unpleasant memo saying they were in the hands of a man that couldn’t even keep himself alive.   
  
Bones let a breath out through his nose. Jim shifted on his feet, pushed his hands into his pocket again and that was all the closer Jim Kirk had ever gotten to admitting he was just a kid and he had no damn idea what he was doing.   
  
“Want a drink?” he asked.  
  
\--  
  
The next mission ended without success and Bones grabbed the whiskey and went to find Jim himself. It wasn’t Jim’s fault this time; nobody could have tried harder than he had. Bones stood in the doorway outside of his room pushing the chime until he was tired of the sound of it echoing in his head.   
  
When Jim finally answered the door he was still in uniform, looked as if he’d been dragged out and beaten in public and all he managed to say was: “Hey.”  
  
Bones held up the bottle. Jim didn’t smile but he nodded and let him in.   
  
Later, when they were drunker he asked: “What’s going to happen now?”  
  
“Fuck if I know,” Jim mumbled as he sat back against the headboard and tipped the bottle up to drink it down as much as his throat could take. “The way I figure—they’ve got someone here, you know, someone telling them what I’m doing because they know  _things_.” He pointed a finger at Bones. “Not you. I know that—but everyone else? Starfleet spies.”  
  
“That’s ridiculous, Jim,” Bones said but it wasn’t. He grabbed for the bottle and ended up sitting in Jim’s lap, face so close to his he could taste the almost sweet stink of his breath. He’d thought about it, sure he’d thought about it and every long day in space was another long day that Jim had to learn how to keep himself company. Bones tipped his head and Jim knocked him in the side of the head with the bottle trying to get his hand around his neck. It was a giggling, silly, sloppy kiss as their tongues rubbed together for the first time (only time) and Jim pushed at his legs until he was straddling him.  
  
“You’re too drunk to get it up,” Bones mumbled into Jim’s hot neck while he took another long swallow.  
  
“Fucking story of my life,” Jim slurred. “It’s Spock. I know it is. Maybe that’s why he’s here—he was the last to come. I said mean things about his Mother, you know, I beat his stupid test. I almost got him killed—maybe I deserve it.” His arms were as strong as jelly around Bones’ back, pulling him closer, pushing his forehead under Bones’ chin, talking to his shirt now. “I don’t want to lose my ship, Bones. I don’t want to—”  
  
Jim cried for himself but Bones held him anyway.  
  
\--  
  
So he was a little drunk, he still knew what he was doing. He knew he was standing in front of Spock’s door with only one thought banging around his head—don’t let Uhura be there—because he knew damn well what he was willing to do. Bones figured he would have done this sober too; it wouldn’t have mattered because it had to be done.  
  
Spock answered the door in a robe and looked at him strangely.  
  
“Uhura here?” Bones asked.  
  
“I am uncertain as to Lt. Uhura’s exact whereabouts,” Spock answered. “You are inebriated.” He moved though, to let Bones into the room, to let the doors close behind them so everything smelled strange (like a desert) and the lights were dim, almost red. This was a room that had been personalized right here. Spock had no problem filling his shelves and decorating his walls. “May I ask—”  
  
“You’re reporting back to Starfleet about Jim,” Bones said. His heart was pounding so hard in his chest he could barely talk, his blood was thrumming through his veins but he couldn’t tell if he were angry about this or that—and then there was Spock.  
  
Spock straightened the robe he wore and put his arms behind his back. He didn’t deny it, he didn’t confirm it either. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to say, maybe it was their dirty little secret, and maybe Spock had any sense of shame.  
  
“Is that why you’re here?” Bones demanded. “Fuck I thought you just didn’t want to lose Uhura—you’re here to get back at Jim, aren’t you? You’re pissed because he beat your test, because he got you angry in front of everyone and turned out to be smarter than you.”  
  
There was that faint twitch to Spock’s lips, his eyebrow, the tip of his head. “As a Vulcan—”  
  
“You are!” Bones roared. “You snitch! You fucking weasel!”  
  
“As part of my duties, I am obliged to provide Starfleet command with accurate reports. I am neither a snitch nor a weasel. I believe you would benefit from visiting Sickbay, Doctor.” He must have meant to take Bones by the elbow, maybe just to wave his hand at him and move him through the power of suggestion—whatever the reason, he was close enough to hit and Bones punched him.  
  
(He just didn’t know what he was angry about anymore.) “He deserves this ship,” he snarled at Spock, “He can do this, he just fucking needs you more concerned with standing at his side than plotting behind his back,” and Bones curled his hand in Spock’s robe.  
  
Spock stared at him, faint green mark on the side of his mouth and the whole world spiraled out and down, months ago in the rain, before that in the heat of the summer when Spock called him Doctor an really meant  _can I fuck you_  that was the same look. “I cannot change facts. I cannot lie.”  
  
“You can  _help_  him,” Bones said.  
  
“I will not file a complaint against you for assaulting me, but again, I would urge you to report to Sickbay.”  
  
File a complaint, file a complaint and Bones’ head must have been spinning because he never noticed before that there were no complaints against him. Not for yelling at his staff, not for breaking rules, not for assaulting Jim. Never a complaint, he twisted his fingers tighter in the robe. He closed his eyes; his breath came out in a heavy pant. “Help him,” he said.  
  
I’ll give you anything you want.  
  
“Doctor,” Spock said and set his hand across Bones’ shoulder. “You leave me with limited choices.” And the world went black.  
  
\--  
  
Bones hadn’t ever woken up in Spock’s bed; he usually woke up with the lingering smell of the Vulcan on his clothes and body. Waking up with a throbbing headache face down on the man’s bed was a new experience.  
  
“Prostitution is a criminal offense,” Spock stated from the left. He was crouching to the side, dressed in his uniform save the actual blue shirt. “Bribery and blackmail are similarly illegal.”  
  
Yeah, well. Bones pushed himself up on one elbow and rubbed the bridge of his nose; it wasn’t even that bad of a headache really. All things considered. “So is assault,” Bones agreed. His knuckles hurt more than Spock’s face probably did.  
  
“You believe I am in a monogamous romantic relationship with Lt. Uhura,” Spock stated. (Mostly, that monogamous thing could be debated but the romantic relationship was accurate enough.) He didn’t move while Bones sat up. “You also believe I am capable of petty revenge against the Captain on the basis that he  _beat my test_.”  
  
“I was there,”  _when you accused Jim_ , Bones said, “You’re as petty as everyone else.”  
  
Spock’s eyebrow twitched at that statement. “You are uncomfortable with adultery.”  
  
Yeah. Never thought he’d be the other fucking woman, but look at that. Bones leaned forward, hands on the sides of the bed to brace himself. “Do you have a point to this?”  
  
“Your actions are completely illogical. I am attempting to find even the smallest indication of reason within them.” Because Spock would never understand human beings, he would never be one; he might never understand that friendship was more important than just about anything else.   
  
“You came to find me, after Jim beat the Kobayashi Maru,” Bones said, “In the diner—because he was my  _friend_ , because you fucked me once and thought I’d tell you what you wanted to know. Where was the reason in that?”  
  
“It was a logical exploitation of common human weakness,” Spock answered.   
  
“You’re a Vulcan,” Bones agreed only he wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to, (that it was no use, maybe, that Jim was going to lose the Enterprise), only knew that it pissed him off and he shoved himself up to stand. The conversation was over.  
  
\--  
  
Bone didn’t know who decided it, he wasn’t there, and he only knew that Jim was leading another mission to the planet’s surface. A second try to get what he failed the first time. The hours grew longer and longer with every minute that he was gone. Nobody was in the Sickbay except Chapel who hummed while she worked in the lab.  
  
Uhura showed up late into the day when Bones was just about crazy from waiting. “Dr. McCoy,” she said.  
  
“Yes?” (Because you never said  _what_  to a lady.) He followed her stare to Chapel humming and motioned them over toward the beds like it mattered when sound carried on this tin can anyway. “What can I do for you?”  
  
“I think Spock’s gay,” she said plainly.  
  
Now there was an interesting thing to say to a man and what was he supposed to infer from that? She knew? She’d always known? Did she want a cure? You couldn’t cure something when it was perfectly healthy. “What?” he said at last.  
  
Uhura put her hand on her hip. “You know what I mean. I love him. We don’t have sex. We’ve never had sex.”  
  
“Why are you—”  
  
She cut him off, she  _knew_. “He thought you’d believe me if I told you. Now you know; I’d appreciate if you kept it to yourself.”  
  
Right, yeah.  
  
\--  
  
It was two weeks before Jim showed up at his door early in the morning, caught him by the back of the neck and kissed him full on the mouth, damn whoever walked past. His tongue wiggling into Bones’ mouth, not even a little drunk, minty fresh as toothpaste and Jim was laughing as he smacked Bones on the ass. “I get to keep her,” he said.   
  
Bones wiped his mouth and shoved Jim back but it was like trying to get a monkey to let go; he had to give in, get kissed again and then Jim pulled back.   
  
“I got something for you,” Jim said and dug into his pocket. “It’s not my dick. You never want that.” He pulled out another one of those flat black disks. “This one plays music.” He found the button and pressed it, a sailboat flickered as the sound of the ocean rushed around it. “I don’t know, thought you’d like it.”  
  
“Thanks, Jim,” Bones said.  
  
\--  
  
Bones found Spock on the observation deck—not that he was looking for him, but that was where he found him. They stood together in the space until Spock glanced at him and Bones looked at his hands, felt like he had when he wore red and Spock wore black, like he was lesser somehow, still hadn’t figured out how to feel like he deserved to be where he was. It was good fortune and better friends that got him here.   
  
He was a doctor; he had no idea how to be a CMO but he was learning.  
  
“Thank you,” Bones said.  
  
Spock said nothing at first, looked at the stars and then finally looked at him again. “I did nothing but report the truth, Doctor.”  
  
Of course he did. Bones snorted. “Well thanks for that,” he said and turned to go.  
  
“Please inform the Captain that he is expected to report to the bridge a full hour earlier than usual time so as to receive an incoming transmission,” Spock said when Bones was almost to the doorway. He was watching him, arms behind his back and his face blank.  
  
“I’m going to bed,” Bones said back.  
  
Spock didn’t nod or blink, his voice didn’t change as he stated: “I assumed as much.”  
  
Bones opened his mouth to ask what the hell he meant by that, why he would assume Bones would stop by Jim’s room on his way to his own bed and— Oh. Son of a bitch, Spock thought he was fucking Jim.


	6. Capsize

Bones was climbing over him like he hadn’t spent half an hour wasting both of their time telling him all the ways that he could have died. Kirk figured that it was one of those things that people did when they wanted to say that they  _cared_  if you lived or died. Bones was good for that—reminding him how he could have died instead of saying he was glad he hadn’t.   
  
Kirk shoved him because he was tired and he wanted to sleep and Bones found the floor and the door and cussed at it until he managed to intimidate it into opening for him. Light was bright across the floor, crawling up into Kirk’s eyes when he would rather have been asleep. Bones shouted: “What?” down the hallway at someone who either didn’t answer or didn’t talk loud enough to be heard.   
  
When Bones came back he was shuffling his feet and frowning. He crawled into bed where it was still warm even if he was cold and hooked an arm around Kirk. Sleeping next to him was a dangerous affair of self-control and a frustrating mix of lust and contentment because Bones snuggled and spooned and acted like he didn’t or it didn’t mean anything.  
  
“Who was that?” Kirk mumbled.  
  
“Nobody, go to sleep,” Bones said to the back of his neck with his body curled against the back of Kirk’s.   
  
\--  
  
Kirk was a Captain—at least for now. Spock called him  _acting_  Captain as if the act of dropping the modifier would somehow undermine his very grasp of reality. So he was  _acting_  Captain and most of the hours of the day he felt like he was  _acting_  because there were a lot of buttons on the Captain’s chair and he only knew what about half of them really did.  
  
Scotty gave him reports that sounded like gibberish and Chekov argued points that sounded like they were valid and Spock frowned at him and countered logically but Kirk was dizzy half the day. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what he was doing, it was that he wanted a minute to breath between the start and finish and he’d barely made it out of Bones’ quarters before it was one thing and then another.  
  
Pike was unconscious still.  
  
The Vulcans that they’d saved were wandering the halls finding nothing but gray and slowly-slowly making themselves ok with it.  
  
Kirk thought: I killed the man that killed my father. He just didn’t know what came next.  
  
\--  
  
Bones didn’t want him there, Kirk knew that as soon as the door opened and the man’s face fell even if it hadn’t ever been up. It was his eyebrow on the right side, how it twitched and how his lips got thin. Whoever he wanted showing up at his door, James T. Kirk wasn’t the right one. Then he sighed and he motioned him inside because any comfort was warm comfort when you were far away from home with no idea about what came next.  
  
Kirk brought his own blanket and his own pillow but slowly and surely enough Bones wiggled under it in his sleep and they were front to back come morning.   
  
Kirk spent seconds and minutes wrapped up in the muggy heat of the blankets and Bones’ arm across his body because it made sense in the same way it never made sense and he could breath here.   
  
\--  
  
Kirk spent an hour sitting next to Pike’s bed in Sickbay, digging his elbows into his knees and pressing his thumbs against the underside of his chin. He had his fingers curled over his mouth and pressing against his lips until he was sure they were going to bruise. A few years back, this man had found some bloody-nosed kid in a bar and dared him to do better. It was nothing but a game when there was no grasp of reality but here it was in bright and brilliant living colors.   
  
He was the (acting) Captain. He had the whole ship full of people (sick, hurt, bleeding crewmembers and pale-impassive-unimpressed Vulcans) waiting for him to make the right decisions but he couldn’t make a single thought break through the fog.   
  
He was scared fucking shitless. Pike kept right on sleeping, believing in his dreams (maybe) that Kirk was the same man his father was. Only his father had been Captain for maybe eleven minutes and he saved eight hundred lives so he didn’t have to live another twenty five years and keep those eight hundred alive and motivated and  _safe_.  
  
Kirk wanted to say  _I don’t know what to do now_  so bad it burned his throat like acid. But he hung his head instead, fingers through his hair to the back of his neck and stood up to move.   
  
\--  
  
It was after one in the morning with Bones curled against his back like a blanket and almost but not quite asleep when Jim asked: “You think they’ll forget about the Kobayashi Maru?”  
  
Bones snorted and his arm tightened all at once and he said: “Yeah, Jim, I think they might.” But he was half-asleep and then completely asleep. When he dreamed they were strange-whimpering sex dreams about someone else because Bones pulled away and left him with the damp impression of his sweat against Kirk’s back.  
  
\--  
  
Back on earth was an interrogation and a psych eval and another week of more people poking and prodding at him to find weak spots in his story. Ever tape was reviewed, every witness was questioned and in the end he was pronounced a hero and given a pat on the back and a chest full of medals.   
  
That word was big on his shoulders calling him a HERO and he was staring at those that he saved and those that had been left behind while they clapped for him. Pike woke up long enough to be relieved but he was still paralyzed and wasn’t ever going to walk again. So Kirk smiled when he took responsibility for a ship because nobody here even remembered that three or maybe four years ago he had been a kid in a jail cell waiting for the twenty four hour hold to be up so he could run right out and  _do it again_. He was respectable now because his chest was heavy with medals and he knew something that saved the day and maybe he was stubborn and stupid and headstrong enough to make sure he was heard.  
  
He was a  _Captain_  now. Twenty-five fucking years old. Everyone was shaking his hand and everyone was clapping him on the back and he smiled and laughed and took every thank you and every congratulations and he didn’t let the gleam of victory slip away from his face until they were all streaming past him and out-away-into the bright Earth beyond the steps of the Academy.  
  
Bones stopped next to him.  
  
Kirk said: “I couldn’t have done it without you, Bones. You’re coming with me, right?”  
  
“Sure, Jim,” Bones said. “Someone’s got to keep you from doing dumbass things.”  
  
\--  
  
It was raining Saturday and he was laying across his bed, staring at the ceiling and the medals they’d pinned on his chest that were dangling from two clenched fingers. He was listening to the pitter-patter-wind song and thinking about thinking about something. There were too many things to think about and names to memorize. There were crew lists that he needed to review and manuals that he had to read and a book of procedures that was thousands of pages long and would details his every move and set parameters for his every decision.  
  
His mother called to congratulate him on a job well done.   
  
He wasn’t sure he’d done a good enough job but he wasn’t about to hand back the Enterprise when it was  _his destiny_  and say no thank you. He was an arrogant bastard and everyone knew it. Everyone knew that arrogance was a cover for incompetence but nobody seemed to care. He wasn’t incompetent and he wasn’t scared or unsure because he’d grinned enough and talked logically enough to a strange-faced woman to get a pass on his psych evaluation.   
  
So, he rolled over onto his belly and held the medals in his fist hanging off the side of the bed and figured that if it was his destiny and if everyone believed he deserved it and if he worked his ass off to get here then it was his and he was going to keep it.  
  
If it scared the hell out of him, well—that was only normal and it would pass.  
  
\--  
  
Bones had given him the code for his dorm door months ago with no pretense and no explanations. Jim hadn’t ever figured out if that was what friends did or if he was supposed to think it was worth something. He knew that half the time Bones didn’t quite like him (in that way that half the time, Bones didn’t quite like anything or anyone) just that when it mattered, Bones hadn’t ever let him down. So he showed up with two coffees (only his was half gone) and a doughnut and no expectations. If he was told to get lost there were plenty of other people willing to share time and space with him.  
  
(And since there were nothing but empty rooms and dead people, there was nothing but empty space to share.)  
  
Bones was under the blankets when Kirk came in the room so he pulled them up and invited himself in. The stink of sex and never-washed-off come was next to overwhelming under the blankets. “It stinks in here,” he said. Bones opened his eyes to look at him, half a heartless smile and a roll of his eyes as Kirk added: “Like…dick.”  
  
“It didn’t before you got here,” Bones said and wiggled to give him space. Paradoxical was just about the only word that fit the man that gave him room and glared at him like he wanted him to go away.  
  
He laughed and pulled the blankets down, let in the bright sun and the fresh air because it was suffocating under there so Bones wiggled up to get his head on the pillow and an arm behind his head. He looked languid and used and unhappy (but always looked one shade shy of content). “Are you naked?” Jim asked.  
  
Bones tipped his head, quirk of his lips and said: “I wasn’t expecting company.”  
  
“You are,” Jim was pulling at his blankets because it was absurd—because he didn’t know why. Because he yanked at the blankets and Bones yanked back but his quirk became a smile and his misery became a struggle against humor. Jim was laughing and Bones was pushing him back forgetting about how he loved his misery more than he loved making sense. When the struggle ended, Kirk still had the blanket in his fists but Bones wasn’t budging so he said: “Did you get laid? Do I know them? Boy or a girl?”  
  
“A gentleman never tells,” Bones answered as he pointed for his doughnut and coffee.  
  
Jim rolled his eyes. “You’re my CMO. It’s all official now.”  
  
Bones nodded into a sip of coffee like it didn’t matter one way or the other. (Maybe it didn’t.)  
  
“At least tell me if it was a boy or a girl,” Jim said.   
  
Bones grinned at him, eyes rolling around in his skull before looking over at him and peeling the wrapper away from the doughnut. “This is sexual harassment, Jim, you might want to brush up on that. And it’s none of your damn business.”  
  
No. It wasn’t.  
  
\--  
  
Thing was, up in space, he was the final authority. There were no Admirals. There were no unconscious Captains. There was no  _acting_  because he really was Captain. So he took a breath before he looked at Sulu and he told himself he could do it like there was nothing to it.   
  
This was his  _destiny_. So he started like he meant to proceed and there was no doubt in his voice or his shoulders when he laid out his first orders (but it was full and heavy in his chest).  
  
\--  
  
Someone died. Jim remembered that through the haze and the odd gulping-hissing sound that followed him through it. It sounded like—through the dense fog—Bones was angry again. He heard screaming followed by cussing and when everything went black and stayed that way, he forgot that someone died.  
  
When he woke up, Bones was sleeping with his head on the biobed next to Kirk’s arm and his shoulders in tight knots and bunches under the loose-cold scrubs. Kirk wondered what happened to his uniform and didn’t have enough energy to question it, just ran his hand down the back of Bones neck and woke him up. Didn’t mean to. “Hey,” he whispered.  
  
“Idiot,” Bones whispered back.  
  
Then he fell asleep again.  
  
\--  
  
Bones kissed him first, he just wouldn’t admit it. Jim was half conscious and Bones was all doctor except that his hand pushed through Jim’s hair. He was giving that usual lecture about keeping himself alive and how it fucking mattered if he lived because some people were going to miss him if he weren’t around.  
  
Jim was too tired to open his mouth but he could hear and see well enough to know that Bones was frowning hard before he stopped and just watched his chest moving. It was paradoxical again because Bones never looked at him like that when he was awake. He damn sure never kissed his forehead and whispered: “Idiot,” before he straightened and hit a few buttons on the screen and then went to find his chair he kept his vigil in.  
  
Kirk wanted to tell him to go sleep and leave him be but he was slipping back into blackness again.  
  
\--  
  
Spock watched him like he was taking notes. He was three foot behind him but never at his side and there was something offensive and shrewdly observant about his stare that seemed almost (perhaps strangely) jealous of him. Kirk thought about asking him what his problem was but that would just get him another one of those lectures about  _procedures_  and  _regulations_  and  _tact_  and how it was required of diplomats.  
  
He was diplomatic like a fucking politician. He knew how to talk and how to woo and how to kiss ass. In theory, he hadn’t ever been any good at kissing ass because ass always tasted like ass and unless he wanted to taste ass—he had no interesting in kissing it. So, now and again, when he should have bent over and taken it—he stood up straight and told them to fuck off through a thin veil of careful words. Spock would take a note of it in his mental list of objections he was going to regurgitate later in the conference room as he pretended that the one year he had on Kirk was like ten in experience and wisdom just because Spock had been born with pointy ears.  
  
What Spock didn’t get was that Kirk was twenty five and the whole universe was wide and full of people that were testing him to find weak spots so if he told them fuck-you now instead of bending over and please-sir-can-I-have-another, maybe next time he saw them they could talk like equals and not like he was a little boy wearing his Daddy’s uniform.  
  
\--  
  
“I got this for you,” Kirk said. Because Bones’ shelves were empty and he walked around the ship like he was nothing but a used-up shadow of a man. He either didn’t notice it or he didn’t care enough to pretend that he wanted to be here. Kirk wasn’t sure if he should be guilty for fighting to get Bones assigned to the ship with him when the nice men that  _decided things_  weren’t sure he was ready to be in space at all.  
  
They said, in private psych-evaluation folders for  _Captain’s Eyes Only_  that Bones hadn’t adjusted well to the last space flight. That he hadn’t handled the stress as  _expected_. That he could very well develop that strange and sadly sometimes unavoidable insanity that came with space-travel. Some people could handle it and some people couldn’t. But Kirk wanted Bones so he fought them with long words and clever attempts at logic that boiled down to nothing but:  _he’s my friend and I don’t want to do this alone._  
  
Bones was hanging off the end of his bed, holding his shot glass in one hand and the quivering whiskey bottle in the other, trying to pour it when he was probably just short of seeing double. His eyes were dark around the edges and his eyebrow was flat and not even curious. He scrunched up his nose in that ugly face and said: “This one of them jokes where I stick my hand in your pocket and find your dick?”  
  
He giggled because fully sober was about six sips ago. He giggled because if he didn’t he thought something might snap because there was only so much his chest could hold and it was fit to burst any second now. “Shit, Bones, you would fall for that.”  
  
Bones just nodded and tried to drink face-down dribbling liquor on his chin and fingers and the floor.   
  
“No,” Jim said. He licked his fingers because he’d been swilling them in the shot of whiskey between his thighs. “For your shelves.” To fill the empty places that spanned the distance between the pony and the box of junk that Bones kept his old wedding ring in. He stood up and pulled the black square of the hologram box out of his pocket. It took a minute to figure out what shelf before he put it next to the wooden box and the soft echoing thump of the alien heart was like a lullaby. “Looks better.”  
  
“Thanks,” Bones mumbled at him before he was fumbling for another shot and not even looking.  
  
\--  
  
Spock got hurt.  
  
Spock got hurt pushing Jim to one side when there was no reason for him to do that. Jim hit the ground on his back and his elbows and his eyes were wide open and  _looking_  when Spock took the full blast of the sizzling-pop of heat when the electric blue shot hit him. He didn’t cry out but the smell of roasting meat was a curling smoke of disgusting in the air. Kirk fumbled for the fallen communicator and flipped it open as he caught Spock when he slumped forward.  
  
There were two hands grabbing him in a grip so tight it felt like his bones would break and he dragged them away—around that corner—away from the outraged locals that considered them enemies for—what the fuck ever, he didn’t even know this time.  
  
Spock was squeezing his arm over his elbow tighter and tighter, going pale and his back was  _smoking_  and  _steaming_  as Kirk shouted to be transported up, to make sure Bones was there, that someone was hurt.  
  
Again.  
  
When he came back to check on Spock, Bones looked at him like he was a failure and Kirk thought that made sense.   
  
\--  
  
He didn’t drink because he was Captain, so he sat at the desk and read the official words of official people that cautioned him about his many, many, many mistakes and asked him to explain himself for his every minute action. They knew things that no one who wasn’t on this ship should know.  
  
(It was Spock. Of course it was. If Starfleet asked, it was only logical to answer.)  
  
Kirk rubbed the black bruises over his elbow and stared at the words and what they meant and how destiny was a crock of shit and he was a fool for believing it.  
  
Have been and always shall be—maybe that was before, because in this universe, in this lifetime, James T. Kirk was no great man and no great captain.   
  
\--  
  
It was four days since he’d slept more than an hour at a time—maybe four hours in four days, maybe a little more. He didn’t remember so when he said  _Well that doesn’t matter does it?_  he meant to make it sound more diplomatic and reasonable. He meant to inquire about the cultural differences and assert that the Federation always respected those. He had been taught all the right words and damn it if there hadn’t been role-plays and seminars and he was  _tired_  and she was some woman that glared at him like Uhura did half the fucking time.  
  
Except the Priestess was a sadistic bitch and it was hours of electrocution that wasn’t designed to kill them, just to teach them a lesson about respect. He babbled apologies like a good boy until she believed him at last and they went home beaten and humiliated and defeated.  
  
Spock looked at him like it was nothing but what he always expected out of Kirk and Bones stared at him like it was only inevitable that Kirk fail.  
  
\--  
  
He was horny and he knew it. Bones was used up and exhausted and he knew it. Somewhere between the two there was no way to figure out who was wrong or right. When he started kissing Bones he got shoved away because it was inappropriate.  
  
Kirk held on and came back again and again because Bones was his friend that was a walking contradiction, who let him get close enough and let him push their mouths together and pushed back like he was going to consider it this time but pushed him back again and again. Away-away. It made no sense, so when he was drunk, just once, he crawled on the bed next to him and curled an arm around him and explained it.  
  
“I just love you,” he said into Bones’ drunken ear. There was no way the man was going to remember it. Bones was floating in whiskey up to his eyeballs, laying on his back, stretched out and not frowning for the first time in months. It was stupid and wrong that it took a fifth of Jack to get him just to smile like the world wasn’t ending and he wasn’t going to suffocate under the weight of his misery. “I love you and I like kissing you.”  
  
“No tongue,” Bones said. “We’re friends.”  
  
So that was their boundary. No tongue. Kirk kissed him and Bones let him do it with no pushing and it was nice, all warm and hot and liquored up. “Do blowjobs count as tongue kisses?”  
  
Bones snorted and laughed as he curled his body around him, leg over his legs. “Probably, unless you’ve got a removable tongue.”  
  
“Damn,” he said.  
  
Bones just laughed again.  
  
\--  
  
He killed that man. Kirk knew it before Bones said it. He knew that the doubt and fear was creeping up his neck to his brain because he couldn’t hold it in his chest anymore. There was a man dying in the desert rock of the mountain and Bones could have saved him but there was the sound of footsteps and the memory of Spock’s hand around Kirk’s arm squeezing-and-squeezing. So he shouted into the communicator and got them out of there.  
  
Kirk killed a man. It wasn’t his enemy and it wasn’t a casualty of the job. He killed a man because he was a coward. Bones was furious in a way he hadn’t mustered the energy to be in months. He twisted around and free from Kirk’s arms, putting space between them as he tore into Kirk’s shirt with the fury in his chest, screaming: “I could have saved him.”   
  
Kirk swallowed his fear and his regret and his sympathy. He was a Captain and this was his subordinate shoving him against the wall. The red-shirted security guards were sneaking closer and if he put Bones in the brig for assault it would be perfectly in his right. (Except he killed a man because he was a coward.) “I had to make a decision,” he said. He put his hand up to stay the security. “I’m the Captain, I have to make decisions.”  
  
“You made the wrong fucking one,” Bones spit at him, shoving him so hard he stumbled back into the wall. He didn’t need to be told because he knew but Bones said it anyway: “I could have saved him.  _You_  killed him.”  
  
“Go cool off,” Kirk said.  
  
“Oh, go fuck yourself Captain,” Bones shot back before he shoved his way past the guards and out into the hall.  
  
Scotty was staring at him with wide eyes and there was doubt in his chest like the doubt in Kirk’s. Soon enough, they’d have enough doubt to swim in.   
  
\--  
  
Spock stood at attention to his left and waited to be acknowledged, “Yes, Mr. Spock?” before he launched into today’s matter of improvement.   
  
“Captain, it has been brought to my attention that Dr. McCoy physically assaulted you in the transporter room. As pursuant to the regulation—”  
  
“Forget it,” Kirk said, “I told him to go cool off, he was just upset. I’m not hurt.”  
  
Spock stood there staring at him as if he were waiting for Kirk to announce that it was all a joke. When the announcement did not come, Spock shifted on his feet and tilted his head with his eyebrow lifting up. “Captain,” he said, “I believe in order to set the appropriate example you should—”  
  
“Spock,” Kirk said, “unless you’re going to take my leniency regarding Bones to mean that you can throw me around the bridge again, I don’t think there’s anyone on this ship that’s going to start assaulting me.” The words were light, almost airy, but there was fury quivering in his chest.  
  
Spock straightened his shoulders. “I would do no such thing.”  
  
“Then leave it alone.”  
  
\--  
  
So, he was going to lose the Enterprise. That was inevitable. He crawled inside his sorrow and whispered a great big  _fuck you_  to failure. If nobody but Bones heard it—that was alright too. Bones was a floppy used up drunk anyway. It was because he was afraid of space and that happened to some people. Some people couldn’t stand the monotony of gray and the carefully-regulated lights. They needed green and brown and solid earth. Sometimes the false gravity drove them insane and they started getting strange ideas about opening hatches and floating away into the black-blanket of silence.  
  
Bones was handsy when he was drunk and he was sympathetic-empathic or maybe just plain pathetic. Kirk hung onto him when Bones fell into his lap and he cried because it had been in his chest since the day he was born. Bones held onto him and rubbed his back and drunk-babbled into his ear about how things were going to get better.  
  
Spock was a spy.  
  
His crew didn’t trust him.  
  
He didn’t even blame them.  
  
\--  
  
“Captain,” Spock said the next morning. They weren’t even on the bridge yet and Kirk didn’t have enough energy to fight the back-stabbing bastard of a spy about anything. He thought that if the man demanded the Captaincy from him in the hallway outside of his quarters he’d hand it over without a fuss.   
  
“Yes, Spock?”  
  
“I believe should we employ your original strategy rather than attempting to…as you might say,  _play it safe_ , we might have more success in securing the rights to mining the minerals the Federation require.” He said it like he meant it sincerely and waited with no expectations while Kirk just stared at him.  
  
“You think—” he started. There was no use in finishing the sentence when Spock was standing there saying that he thought that Kirk might have gotten something right. The only thing that he had left to lose was his life and when everything else was going to shit anyway—that wasn’t really such a big thing to lose.   
  
Blaze of glory over a shadow of shame, Kirk figured so he nodded. “Alright, Spock. Gather a landing party.”  
  
\--  
  
It was two weeks of turn-around after he secured the full rights to the mining of any damn mineral the Federation wanted over a candlelit dinner with a pretty woman who knew some people who knew some people. Spock had talked logic and Kirk had put his smile to good use and while she was charmed by his eyes and his sweet puppy-good-looks, her superior had been wooed by the promise of recompense and uplifted by the staggering opportunity of contributing to the overall good of the universe. (Mostly, though, Kirk figured that the recompense was what did the trick. He was a little generous with what he offered without going over budget.)  
  
Spock had looked at him across the transporter pad and squinted at him as if he had never really noticed a particular feature on his face before. “You purchased a hologram,” he said.  
  
Kirk nodded and pulled it out, “Yeah, for Bones.”  
  
Then whatever burgeoning approval had been in Spock’s eyes went a little flat and he nodded his head once. “I see.”  
  
“It’s not like you and Uhura,” Kirk said because he wasn’t having sex with Bones and he hadn’t ever had sex with Bones (despite his attempts).   
  
“I see,” Spock said again.  
  
\--  
  
When he got the word that he was going to keep his ship, for sure, he went straight for Bones and he didn’t even try to act like he was anything but happy because he  _was_. He was sober and he was capable (and working out the kinks) and Bones was grumpy like he always was. Kirk caught him by the back of the neck and pulled him forward, kissing him with tongue (forget the rules) and smacked him on the ass because it was naughty (and he was still horny). “I get to keep her.”  
  
Bones wiped his mouth and shoved at him but Kirk held on and kissed him again with just his lips before he moved back and grinned like a fool. He said: “I got something for you,” with his hand down in his pocket, “it’s not my dick. You never want that.”   
  
Bones’ eyebrow went up and then down again when Kirk held out the black hologram and pushed the button on it. “This one plays music.” Like the gentle sound of waves against the beach—sounded like the sandy shore in San Francisco had sounded. Like earth and everything that Bones missed every day he was stuck up here in space with him. “I don’t know, thought you’d like it.”  
  
When Bones took it in his hand he smiled at it, turned it one way and the other and said: “Thanks Jim.”  
  
\--  
  
Spock was in the conference room when Kirk found him. He had reported in early to the bridge and then excused himself with a message to Chekov to inform Kirk as soon as he arrived where exactly his First Officer was. He went through the doors and found Spock staring at the screen, listening studiously to the lecture about the culture of Yallen VI. He leaned forward to silence the screen when he saw Kirk standing there. “Yes, Captain?”  
  
There were things he needed to say, things he’d had knocking around his chest for a week, for months, ever since this bastard of a Vulcan looked at him in front of a crowd of his peers and called a cheat and used his father as an example. He looked down and Spock only waited. “I know you’re reporting to Starfleet.”  
  
“I am aware that you are aware of this,” Spock said, “Dr. McCoy was kind enough to inform me.” He stood up so at least they were looking at one another face-to-face like equals. “I was not aware that you were ever unaware.” His lips quirked at the repetition of the words he was using as if the faulty nature of the English tongue offended him.   
  
“Look,” Kirk said, “we’re out here and they’re back there—and I know all of their rules as well as you do even if I don’t have them memorized in three languages. I need you to be here. Do you understand that?”   
  
Spock had his arms behind his back, a strange look on his face as if he did not understand at all. When he inclined his head it was not agreement or disagreement or anything but acknowledgement that words had been spoken. “Despite what you and Dr. McCoy may believe, I did not accept this post with any intention of harming your career or your person. I accepted it because I was informed by a mutual acquaintance that it would be to my benefit to do so. It was, admittedly, a flawed decision.”  
  
“So, what? You want to leave? You want me transfer you?”  
  
“I wish to stay,” Spock said.  
  
Kirk nodded—and there was a green mark on Spock’s neck above his collar that looked a damn lot like a hickey or a bite and the man wasn’t doing a damn thing to hide it. “What’s that?” he asked when he probably should have kept his mouth shut.  
  
“I believe it is sometimes called a hickey.” Spock did not move from his stance because he didn’t have the good sense to blush about having a hell of a bite mark on his neck. Uhura was either starving or Spock was made of something delicious. But he was looking decidedly to the left as if he were uncomfortable.   
  
“Wow,” Kirk said.   
  
“Any further questioning on this subject would be considered inappropriate,” Spock said, “however, if you have time there are several things I wish to brief you on regarding our next mission.”   
  
“I won’t ask a thing about you and Lt. Uhura,” Kirk agreed.  
  
Spock’s eyebrows twitched and his stance loosened up and for all of a minute he looked like he had been  _betrayed_  by someone. His mouth opened and then closed again. He turned to look at the screen as if he were shaking himself away from a thought and—  
  
“It’s not Uhura?” Kirk asked. (There was this feeling in his gut.)  
  
“No,” Spock said, “I do not understand the foundation on which this fallacious belief that I am engaged in any relationship with Lt. Uhura beyond that of a mutual acquaintanceship is based.”  
  
Kirk thought he had enough evidence on hand that he could put up one hell of an argument that even Vulcan logic would have to acknowledge. It wasn’t an assumption when you watched someone tonguing the other on a transporter pad and Spock had been a second away from saying he loved her when they were on Nero’s ship months and months ago. “I just thought you were—”  
  
“We are not,” Spock informed him.  
  
He shouldn’t have asked and it wasn’t any of his business as long as nobody was complaining but he couldn’t quite stop his mouth from saying: “So, who is it?”  
  
Vulcans didn’t lie and Vulcans didn’t have emotions but Spock was half-human and he looked almost apologetic and all stiff-and-annoyed when he said: “Dr. McCoy.”


	7. Honesty and Denial

Spock’s concept of humanity was born of a series of circumstances and incidents. He remembered his interactions with humans on several levels and took into account the various mitigating circumstances and believed that he evaluated the outcomes with a softly-focused lens that allocated a certain handicap to the humans for the mental faculties they did not possess. It was through this system that he had developed several hypotheses regarding them that, somewhat unfortunately, held true.  
  
The majority of Humans were compulsive liars through acts of omission and intentional ignorance if not through outright malicious intent. There were, of course, the few and varied instances of unintentional ignorance that was born of some subconscious desire toward denial. Spock had not successfully differentiated the significance of subconscious denial versus the act of intentionally denying knowledge. He kept in mind, while he attempted to sort it out, two similar episodes.   
  
The first and, perhaps, more memorable involved a man of approximately the same physical age. He was Human, naturally, and had been more than fleetingly attractive by all the common indicators. More important than his state of being handsome was the fact that he was very aware of his condition of sexual superiority that his pleasing aesthetics brought him. This was, perhaps, Spock’s first real experience with arrogance and it had been oddly intoxicating to find a someone so very enraptured with themselves so as to be entirely assured that their every action and thought were absolutely correct. The seduction had been quite short and upon review seemed to involve nothing more than hand motions and long looks. Spock surmised, in the months that followed, that he had been nothing more than an experiment for the other man. However, for Spock himself, it had been several firsts.   
  
The first time he participated in sexual encounters with a man. The first time he had tried a number of alcoholic beverages. The first time he had been so thoroughly overcome through physical and mental stimuli. When he thought of it, he could remember the distinct feeling of being held under shallow water. He could breathe but he could not clearly see nor feel. His sensations were divided between being unnecessary amplified—the sound of his own heartbeat, the ache of his body as it was used—and unpleasantly dimmed—an inability to think clearly. Once the physical interaction was complete he was not dismissed so much as encouraged to leave as quickly as he cared to.  
  
There were several lessons Spock took from the encounter itself but perhaps the most important came when the man acted as if he had never seen nor heard Spock prior to their awkward meeting in the corridors of the school. He had several young men of comparable stature around him at the time and he’d stared at Spock with intentional ignorance as he stated clearly and firmly that he did not know him.   
  
Emotions very often slipped past Spock’s control even when he tried hard to hold them back. He remembered the very unpleasant sensation that the experience of being ignored by this man had brought him. He boxed it up as a scientific curiosity and placed it to the side where he could make use of it through observation and experimentation.  
  
The second episode involved Dr. McCoy and his curious state of subconscious denial. It persisted long after their sexual encounters. He did not outwardly or even inwardly deny that they had engaged in sexual congress. Rather than deny that, he removed all of his own emotional connection to it and regulated it to the status of a reoccurring one-night stand. More troubling than removing his own emotional connection to the instances, Dr. McCoy removed Spock’s thoughts, motivations and attachment to them. It was, in the brief flashes he gained the insight through, as if he wrapped the two occurrences up into boxes and placed them on a high shelf where he would not need to look at them. McCoy classified this as the  _simpler_  solution.  
  
Spock could not, then, begin to imagine what might have been the more complicated solution.   
  
\--  
  
Nyota visited him often. In fact, Nyota visited him every evening for at least a matter of minutes. She sat on the small couch at his side with her knees bent and usually resting across his thighs and she curled her small and warm fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. She did not always talk about anything of significance.  
  
There was the rather impressive three day dissertation on the many differences between replicated food and that that was grown and prepared on Earth. There was the lingering concern over the length of the standard issue dress and how it appeared to be getting shorter every day they were in space. There was her quiet, low-burning fury over what she perceived to be the Captain’s incompetence.   
  
“Nyota,” Spock said when she began to criticize the Captain. He could not, exactly, place why this bothered him. The Captain had exhibited several various personal shortcomings that led to an overwhelming doubt throughout the crew that he was capable of performing his duties. His apparent lack of foresight was the most troubling as he seemed to intentionally offend every one he met. As he was, naturally, a somewhat overly assertive man this unfortunate development was not entirely surprising.  
  
“I don’t care,” she said with her fingers around the back of his neck, “he’s going to get himself killed—or he’s going to get us killed. I wish he’d just—” she did not have words for what she wished of him. Her desires that he be older, more seasoned, and more sensible were all selfish when she, herself, was none of those things. Her role, she consoled herself, was not so crucial as his. Furthermore, she excelled at translation and communication and therefore had no worries. Jim, as she called him, failed at the every minute facet of his station. “Grow up.”  
  
“I would caution you about to whom you state these concerns. Not only could it be misconstrued but it is damaging to crew morale.” Spock watched her face as she looked down at the hem of her dress and pulled at it. Her thoughts were in tangles and knots because she wanted him to agree with her. She wanted him to have a feeling of vengeance and spite for the man and she did not. She knew that her own feelings were not easily explained and perhaps founded entirely on some sense of jealousy that she could not precisely name. Then again, when she looked at Spock, she wanted him in any way she could have him. This, more so than anything, brought an apology to his lips. For her benefit more than for his own. “Nyota,” he said again.  
  
“I know,” she said quite often. She kissed his temple and her eyes closed and she wished, as if she were a child that believed in such things, that he could be happy, that he could be content and  _cared for_. Nyota knew that he was not at peace, that he was not at ease, that he could not meditated without remembering that his mother no longer existed and neither did his planet.   
  
Spock folded his hand across hers on his face and closed his eyes when she wished such things. Nyota was, perhaps, the most honest Human he had ever met and her honesty was brittle and painful.  
  
\--  
  
Effective relationships were not built on the arbitrary definition of ‘ _liking someone_ ’ as Humans seemed to believe. The relationship that was built on a foundation of mutual respect and acceptable boundaries were infinitely more effective and usually more palatable.   
  
The trouble with this system was, of course, finding any particular Human that agreed with the theory and was willing to follow through with it. James T. Kirk, Captain of the USS Enterprise, did not believe in a foundation of mutual respect and acceptable boundaries. He did not believe in boundaries at all. In fact, he seemed  _offended_  by boundaries. Spock felt that despite this shortcoming, their working relationship could exist on the basis that Jim was  _the Captain_  and Spock was his First Officer.   
  
On the many occasions that failed, Spock could only cross his arms over his chest and observe the strange behavior that Jim demonstrated in an attempt to memorize and therefore predict his highly unorthodox and chaotic future actions.  
  
When Starfleet command asked him to evaluate and review the Captain’s performance and submit fully detailed reports as to the daily workings of the ship and the success or failure of the away missions including his personal hypothesis as to the cause of either outcome, he did so with no sense of pause or hesitancy.  
  
It was only honesty.  
  
\--  
  
“Spock,” Nyota said the day after he was released from Sickbay. The burns that covered a greater portion of his back had been successfully debrided and healed. Dr. McCoy had been, as usual, the consummate slightly offensive professional that continued to act and think as if they had not engaged in sexual congress. (Or, perhaps, more importantly, as if they had not sat in the dark of a dorm room and explored the depths of that thing called ‘despair’ together.) “What happened between you and McCoy?” She was not touching him then but rather sitting back against the arm of the couch with her hand on the back cushion of the couch and the other laying across her lap. She was dressed in her night clothes and there was a cup of hot tea waiting at the side with its steam curling into the air.   
  
“I do not believe it is socially acceptable to divulge details about one’s sexual encounters to third parties.” Most especially not to a third party that was not impartial. His back still ached where the blast did the most damage. It was to be expected, Dr. McCoy had informed him. There had been a noticeable air of concern in his voice when he spoke and it seemed almost as if he wished to touch Spock in some gesture of reassurance. Spock did not know much about doctor but he knew that the man was fond of touch under the right circumstances.   
  
“I don’t mean,” Nyota said and then stopped. She seemed—sad. “I don’t mean what you did with him in bed, Spock. I mean…” When she could not find an end to the sentence that she liked, she rested her hands in her lap again and just stared at him. As if she was gauging his reaction to something. “I mean—was it only sex?”  
  
It was difficult to discern if her concern was the need to be reassured that he did not spend this manner of time with others or from an alternate source. “I do not understand the nature of your query,” he said.  
  
“He stayed with you,” Nyota said, “I heard the nurses say he was rude to Jim and he’s never rude to Jim—hell, if you hadn’t told me that you’d had sex with him I would have thought they were together. He stayed with you and I know you’ve been keeping him from getting written up.”  
  
“Dr. McCoy’s offenses are minor and not worthy of being written up,” Spock stated.  
  
Nyota pressed her lips together and sighed at him as if he were a child. When she touched him it was to turn his face and she pressed her lips to his with some regret and some hope that he would find his way. Neither thought made sense in the context they were presented. “Good night, Spock,” she said to him and smoothed her hand down his hair.   
  
\--  
  
The Captain remarked: “Well, that doesn’t matter, does it?”  
  
Spock understood the nature of disappointment. It was not that he was surprised by this statement because he was not. In and of itself, it was nothing that the Captain would not think on any given mission. He was fully capable of diplomacy and he excelled at creative problem solving, however, he appeared to delight in the chaos that purposefully acting in ignorance of his skills brought him.   
  
After the customary punishment of electrocution was complete and they were released to return to their ship, they were sitting in Sickbay while the doctor’s staff argued over the method they preferred to proceed. The Captain was looking at his blackened hands and sniffing the air as if the unpleasant odor their uniforms were giving off was especially offensive to him.  
  
Dr. McCoy looked at the Captain and said: “You suck as the Captain.”  
  
It was the unfortunate truth of the matter.   
  
\--  
  
The away mission ended without failure, exactly, however, news of the unfortunate conclusion reached him quickly. Spock listened to several reports that Dr. McCoy had verbally and physically assaulted the Captain in the transporter room due to some miscommunication about a person down on the planet’s surface. The details were sketchy and the facts were few but the important commonality between the statements was that the doctor assaulted the Captain.   
  
Spock could not write away this offense as minor. He could, however, convince the Captain to downplay the significance of it by reminding him of his long standing friendship with the doctor. (Spock’s compulsion to do any such thing stemmed from a sense of debt that he felt toward the man for allowing him the safety of his humanity in which to feel. At least, that was how he classified it when he felt he needed to define the parameters of the feeling.)   
  
He waited to be acknowledged as was customary.  
  
Jim looked up at him from the PADD he had been studying and seemed, most of all, exhausted by the effort it took him to say: “Yes, Mr. Spock?”  
  
“Captain, it has been brought to my attention that Dr. McCoy physically assaulted you in the transporter room. As pursuant to the regulation—”  
  
“Forget it,” Kirk said, “I told him to go cool off, he was just upset. I’m not hurt.”  
  
That was—the desired outcome. In fact, it was better than the desired outcome as it neatly cleared Dr. McCoy of all reprimand. It was not, however, the logical action. By allowing the incident to go unaddressed, it signaled to the rest of the crew that the Captain need not be respected. Perhaps, worse than that, it conveyed the sense that you need no concern yourself with proper behavior so long as you counted yourself a friend of the man. “Captain,” he said, “I believe in order to set the appropriate example you should—”  
  
“Spock,” Kirk said, “unless you’re going to take my leniency regarding Bones to mean that you can throw me around the bridge again, I don’t think there’s anyone on this ship that’s going to start assaulting me.”   
  
“I would do no such thing.” However, if Jim set his mind to it, he could raise Spock to the heightened emotional state that would be necessary to cause him to consider it. The man had an amazing ability with his words and his body language to infuriate those around him. If he could mutate that into a more useful talent, he would be worthy of the role he know enjoyed.  
  
“Then leave it alone.”  
  
\--  
  
Dr. McCoy came to the door of his quarters wearing his black undershirt and no shoes. He leaned against the frame of the door in such a manner that betrayed he did not care what was about to be said to him. He was, as was characteristic of certain humans dealing with guilt, careless about the consequences. There was no doubt that he would accept them if there were any but he would glare at them with this stare of arrogance and revulsion. He would act as if he were not bothered. It was, perhaps, a matter of pride.   
  
“Well?”   
  
Spock found him most unattractive when he was most like Jim. “I came to inform you that there has been no formal complaint filed against you. However, as assaulting the Captain is a serious offense, I would suggest you maintain a respectful and cautious distance.”  
  
That was his purpose so he nodded and left.  
  
\--  
  
“What is the purpose of denial?” Spock asked her.   
  
The most recent away mission ended as the others had, with failure. There was no mystery as to the consequence of this mission. The Captain would, inevitably, be removed from duty. It was the only logical solution when statistically he was the worst Captain in the fleet. Starfleet would be remiss to allow him to continue. His question was as much about Jim’s denial of his own talents and his stubborn ignorance of Spock’s attempts to assist him in finding a more effective way of management as it was about Dr. McCoy’s persistent denial of his own emotional attachment.  
  
They were, possibly, the most illogical Humans Spock had ever met.  
  
Nyota was brushing her hair while they visited in her quarters and she paused to consider the statement. “In reference to what exactly?” By all the accept measures, she was a very attractive woman and her clear affection for him caused him a conflicted state of wishing to return her affection in more than a platonic manner.   
  
She would be, seemingly, the simpler solution.  
  
“I do not understand the nature of denial.”  
  
“You mean you don’t understand why McCoy won’t look at you when you’re completely awake but he hovers over your bed when you’re unconscious and hurt and glares at anyone that comes near you? Or you don’t understand why Jim acts like nobody knows he’s more than a little attached to McCoy. Or you don’t understand why you haven’t figured out that  _you’re_  in love with McCoy.” She waved her hand to one side in a dismissive gesture. “If you ask me, I don’t understand why any of you like him.”  
  
Spock stood. “I am a Vulcan. I am not  _in love_  with Dr. McCoy.”  
  
“You protect him.”  
  
That was—  
  
“You watch him when he’s not looking. I know you don’t like Jim so the fact that you’re trying to help him—the fact that you stopped him from getting shot like he probably deserved—you didn’t do that for him.”  
  
“As part of my duties I’m required to—”  
  
“Spock,” Nyota said with one hand against his chest, “I think you understand denial better than you want to admit.”  
  
\--  
  
It was quite late at night when Dr. McCoy showed up at the door of his quarters completely inebriated and full of circular thoughts that swept in nonsensical cyclones. His words were in slurs and heavy with an accent but his thoughts were all in fragments and quickly be reduced to wandering words screaming out of the haze of alcohol stupor. “Uhura here?” McCoy asked.  
  
  
“I am uncertain as to Lt. Uhura’s exact whereabouts,” Spock answered. “You are inebriated.” He stepped back to allow the Doctor to enter because continuing this conversation in the hall would only draw an audience. The Doctor stepped inside and sank his hands down into his pockets as he leered at the walls and shelves of Spock’s quarters. His eyebrows signaled that he was impressed and his lips indicated that he was somehow amused. “May I ask—”  
  
“You’re reporting back to Starfleet about Jim,” Bones said.   
  
Ah. Spock straightened his robe and put his arms behind his back. This was a confrontation. It was not entirely without justification nor could he count it as a surprise. Spock’s duties endangered Jim’s well-being and therefore Dr. McCoy had to express his anger at it.  
  
“Is that why you’re here?” Bones demanded. “Fuck I thought you just didn’t want to lose Uhura—you’re here to get back at Jim, aren’t you? You’re pissed because he beat your test, because he got you angry in front of everyone and turned out to be smarter than you.”  
  
His statements were almost entirely fallacious. Spock had never been in danger of ‘losing Uhura’ and he certain did not harbor resentment toward Jim. If he harbored any such resentment it had little to do with the Kobiyashi Maru and more to do with— “As a Vulcan—”  
  
“You are!” Bones shouted. “You snitch! You fucking weasel!”  
  
“As part of my duties, I am obliged to provide Starfleet command with accurate reports. I am neither a snitch nor a weasel. I believe you would benefit from visiting Sickbay, Doctor.” He intended to catch the doctor by his elbow and escort him to Sickbay where they would cure him of his nearly toxic inebriation.  
  
The Doctor, however, took his motion as that of aggression and responded with equal violence. His punched Spock as hard as he could coordinate the movement of his body and stood there with his shoulders heaving under the stress of his emotional duress. “He deserves this ship,” he all but spat, “He can do this, he just fucking needs you more concerned with standing at his side than plotting behind his back.”  
  
His fists were getting tighter in Spock’s robes as his thoughts began to cut at both the Doctor’s mind and his own. There was so much confusion the room itself seemed to tilt and Spock’s jaw hurt peripheral to the sudden loss of reality around them. There were too many contradictions in the thoughts and actions of the man in front of him to begin to sort out the truth from the words he was shouting.  
  
Spock stared at him. “I cannot change facts. I cannot lie.”  
  
“You can help him,” Bones said.  
  
“I will not file a complaint against you for assaulting me, but again, I would urge you to report to Sickbay.”  
  
Now, the Doctor thought of the past months. He thought of each instance Spock had prevented a complaint from reaching the stage of formal or written and how he had therefore kept his record clear. As his thoughts seized upon each of them, it was as if he saw them for the first time. He was panting with his eyes closed and his hands curling in Spock’s robe. “Help him.”  
  
Then, like a slap in the face, the Doctor quietly offered his body and mind and whatever else Spock might have required as a bribe.  
  
It hurt and Spock could not find the edges of the hurt to give it definition and a name. So he laid his hand across McCoy’s shoulder and found the point at which he would need to apply pressure. “Doctor, you leave me with limited choices.”   
  
McCoy went easily into unconsciousness and Spock caught his wilting body and carried him to the bed.   
  
\--  
  
It was one of the longer nights of his life. The longest was a night remembered from childhood when his mother had suffered from an illness that could have claimed her life. He remembered the time would not pass as it should have because he was locked in anxiety he was ill-equipped to handle at the time. His father had been stalwart and unemotional and Spock had felt revulsion and disgust for him.  
  
This night was, in comparison, relatively quick. He spent it in quiet observance of the Doctor and in thought of the course of their relationship. He catalogued their every interaction, he assessed their various exchanges and pieced together what knowledge he had known prior to this drunken confrontation and what he had learned from it.  
  
He considered the puzzling supposition that McCoy might, in fact, harbor more than passing feelings of friendship for the Captain and compared it to what he knew of the man. He considered the strange belief that the man still held that Spock was involved in a romantic or sexual relationship with Nyota.  
  
When the Doctor woke up he was disoriented until he saw Spock crouching near the wall. Then he was merely resigned to the inevitable. Whatever he felt the inevitable must be.  
  
“Prostitution is a criminal offense,” Spock stated because it seemed the most prudent. “Bribery and blackmail are similarly illegal.”  
  
McCoy pushed himself up to one elbow and pulled his knees up so he was nearly sitting before rubbing the bridge of his nose and agreeing with Spock’s assessment by adding: “So is assault.”  
  
His honesty was strangely selective and almost always self-depreciating. It was confounding that he accepted he acted in an irrational and illegal manner but refused to admit to the cause of the behavior.  
  
“You believe I am in a monogamous romantic relationship with Lt. Uhura,” Spock stated. He watched McCoy sit up as he added. “You also believe I am capable of petty revenge against the Captain on the basis that he  _beat my test._ ” The Kobiyashi Maru was not Spock’s test, merely a simulation that he accepted the duty of programming while serving as a instructor.  
  
“I was there. You’re as petty as everyone else.”  
  
What was not immediately clear was whether or not this state of perceived pettiness was a cause of joy for the perception of equality it allowed or aggression due to the fact that it was directed toward McCoy’s self-declared friend. “You are uncomfortable with adultery.”  
  
McCoy’s eyes closed. He thought, perhaps, of his own personal history before he opened them again and caught the edges of Spock’s rumpled bed in his hands. He looked at him directly. “Do you have a point to this?”  
  
“Your actions are completely illogical. I am attempting to find even the smallest indication of reason within them.”   
  
“You came to find me, after Jim beat the Kobayashi Maru, in the diner—because he was my friend, because you fucked me once and thought I’d tell you what you wanted to know. Where was the reason in that?”  
  
“It was a logical exploitation of common Human weakness,” Spock answered. At that point they were engaged in a game of selective, willful denial. There was no reason not to use the potential source of information that was readily available to him.  
  
“You’re a Vulcan,” McCoy stated.  
  
It was only honesty.  
  
\--  
  
Nyota caught him in the turbolift after he encouraged the Captain to attempt the most recently failed away mission again. She pushed her hand against the stop button and looked at him with one hand on her hip. She did not make an attempt to, as they said, beat around the bush but rather said outright: “You love him.”  
  
“I do appear to have a certain irrational and highly illogical weakness to him. I am attempting to isolate whether or not I inadvertently bonded with him during the second sexual encounter.”  
  
Nyota put her finger on his lips to silence him. She was hurt and she was angry but most of all, as her finger shifted and her hand was against his cheek, she  _loved_  him. As completely as he had ever been loved, she  _loved_  him. So she nodded her head. “So what’s his problem.”  
  
“They are too numerous to name,” Spock said.  
  
She laughed. “Ok, give me one.”  
  
“He believes I am involved in a romantic and sexual relationship with you and that I am, as he phrases it, cheating on you with him. I have attempted to convince him that this is not the truth to any avail. He persists with the belief.”   
  
\--  
  
Nyota stroked the nape of his neck in silence. She understood that when he offered his hypothesis regarding the Captain’s affection for Dr. McCoy that he did not want further points of reference. He did not wish to speak of it at all. In fact, rather than speak of it, he wished to forget it as he wished to forget any lingering attachment he felt toward the Doctor himself.  
  
In this instance, denial made sense. He did not even attempt to reason it under any other name.   
  
She leaned against his side and put her arms around his chest and she said: “I know.”  
  
The truth was, of all people, she understood best of all. So he put his hand on her elbow and he joined her in feeling the odd and prickling sensation of wanting what one could not have complicated by wishing well-being for the very source of the unpleasant sensation.  
  
\--  
  
Reports of the apparently impressive kiss in the corridor shared between Dr. McCoy and the Captain reached him quickly. Spock did not react because he did not care. Nyota looked at him when she heard and she cared for him.  
  
Later, perhaps by days, McCoy found Spock on the observation deck as if he were intentionally hoping to find him. He did not speak but rather took up space next to him and observed his hands. “Thank you,” McCoy said.  
  
Spock was unsure of what he should say. The gratitude made him uncomfortable so he considered the alternate reactions while he looked at the stars. In the end he looked at McCoy and said: “I did nothing but report the truth, Doctor.”  
  
“Well thanks for that,” he said and turned to go.  
  
“Please inform the Captain that he is expected to report to the bridge a full hour earlier than usual time so as to receive an incoming transmission,” Spock said when it would have been fairer to remain silent.  
  
“I’m going to bed,” McCoy responded.  
  
Spock didn’t nod or blink: “I assumed as much.”  
  
Dr. McCoy stared and then opened his mouth and then returned to staring at him. When he realized what Spock was insinuating, his stature changed and his hands curled into fists. “What?” he demanded through his teeth.


	8. Ignorance, not bliss

The first coherent thought was  _why_.  
  
Why the hell would Spock think that Bones was fucking Jim? But that was easy wasn’t it? Jim was tongue-kissing him in the corridors and bringing him little toys and trinkets like a little kid with a crush on his school-teacher. It made perfect sense that Spock would think that. After all, Bones had stumbled into his room in a drunken fit and demanded that Jim be saved. Why bother doing so if not for love and—  
  
“What?” Bones demanded. “What the hell are you trying to saying?”  
  
Spock’s eyebrow lifted. “I am trying to say nothing. I asked you to remind the Captain—”  
  
“Oh cut the shit,” Bones said. That Vulcan misinterpretation, misunderstanding, miscommunication crap was annoying. Precision in language was nothing at all but a pointless pretension when they both damn well knew what he was asking. “I’m not with Jim.”  
  
It was all imagination how Spock’s face seemed to change and didn’t. How he didn’t know what to do with that statement but he couldn’t hide the relief that went through him. Then it was gone like it never happened and Spock didn’t look away from him. “You have been seen participating in several widely accepted Human courting customs.”  
  
“Like what?” Bones asked.  
  
“He brings you gifts.”  
  
“We’re friends.”  
  
“He is often in your quarters after hours.”  
  
How the hell did Spock know that? “We’re  _friends_ ,” Bones repeated.  
  
“You kiss,” Spock stated, “In the corridors. That is not a logical action given the standing though rarely enforced rule against fraternizing among the crew. Furthermore, he is the Captain and the appearance favoritism could be potentially harmful to his career and ability to command this ship.”  
  
The last thing Jim needed to worry about was the command of this ship except for smug fucking First Officers that didn’t like him. “He kisses everyone.”  
  
Spock did not seem impressed. “If you do not intend to remind the Captain, I will do so myself before my shift.” And Spock was going to leave, just like that, was going to walk away and leave. He didn’t believe a word that Bones said.   
  
Humans were liars anyway. He didn’t think too hard about assault or superior officers—the last damn thing Spock was to him right now was superior—when he threw his whole body against Spock’s when he tried to walk past him. Might have been surprise, it might have been momentum, might have been dumb luck but whatever moved Spock they ended up slamming into a wall. Bones’ elbow hit it and his hand fisted the front of Spock’s shirt.  
  
“Stop walking away from me,” Bones snarled.  
  
“You never invited me to stay,” Spock said back. It was bright, alive and  _furious_.   
  
The kiss hurt as much as anything. His lips were throbbing and his tongue was caught between sharp teeth as hard hands shoved his shirt up and fingers rubbed too hard and plucked at him. He twisted his hands in Spock’s hair; ground his hips forward against him until it felt like they were grating their hipbones together. Breaths were stolen between frantic, hateful kisses. His pants were pulled, the button broken in two under the pressure of Spock’s grip and there were hot hands gripping, pulling,  _squeezing_  his ass.   
  
Bones pulled away from the kiss, licked down to Spock’s perfect fucking throat and raked his teeth across the pale flesh hard enough to bruise. To hurt, to leave something behind that neither of them could deny come morning and whatever this was it wouldn’t be some dirty, silent, pulsing secret nobody talked about. Spock moaned a growl. It wasn’t much warning before Bones was shoved face first against the wall hard enough he had no breath. His pants were around his thighs and Spock was nuzzling the nape of his neck as he pushed his own pants down or out of the way.  
  
“Lube,” Bones said, turning his head, craning his neck to try to see.  
  
“I am aware, Doctor.”  
  
There was a hard arm against his shoulder blades shoving him back against the wall and Spock finger-fucked him on the observation deck, slipping wetly into his body again and again until Bones thought there must have been scratches on the wall from his fingernails clawing for purchase. He pressed his face against the crook of his elbow when the arm let up off his back, two hands on hips when Spock fucked him properly.  
  
\--  
  
There he was on the floor. Collapsed. Standing was far too difficult when his legs were shaking and his body felt like it had been poured full of hot jelly instead of bones. He landed on his back and Spock landed on his ass and the two of them lay there, sat there for a minute. Until he tugged his pants back up and left them almost zipped and buttoned.   
  
“Well,” Bones said and wiped his hand down his face over the tracks of tears he couldn’t remember shedding. Sex tears were strange things, tension relief—stress-induced—didn’t matter, he didn’t care.  
  
Spock lifted his hips to pull his pants up and tuck himself in. There was something definitely sheepish to the way he didn’t quite look at Bones while he said: “I did not intend to do that, Doctor.”  
  
“I’ve got a fucking name,” Bones said, “I’m sure it’s just a stupid Human thing—but after you fuck someone like that, it’s nice to use their name.” He meant for the words to have more venom but they came out in little breaths, already exhausted before they got started.  
  
“You have never offered me your name; therefore it would have been inappropriate to use it.” Spock looked at him then. They were back to that awkward sort of silence that they shared. Bones remembered it from the first time when the sex was over and the sweat was cooled and neither of them had any idea what to say to the other. Spock had offered a shower and Bones said he really should go.   
  
The whole thing was really just stupid. He licked his lips. “It’s Leonard,” he said.  
  
Spock nodded. “My quarters are closer in proximity than yours. You are welcome to make use of the facilities.”  
  
Bones laughed and he had no idea why.  
  
\--  
  
Vulcan pick up lines really did leave something to be desired. Bones half figured it was because Spock didn’t understand the concept and because even if he did, it was a stranger in a strange land and the language didn’t translate quite right. Regardless of why, Spock didn’t have pick up lines and Bones didn’t need them but they still ended up on the bed.  
  
Spock stroked his skin and kissed and licked and petted him until Bones was squirming. Squirming and pushing up and back and sideways, tugging and yanking and breathing dirty curses and Vulcan hands and tongue and that was all good and nice but—  
  
“Come on,” he moaned finally. Spock crawled back up, licking his green tongue across his swollen green lips and he’d never looked stranger. Bones thought about telling him that and forgot because there was a hand on his, fingers between his and they were holding hands while they fucked.  
  
Only this wasn’t that, wasn’t hard and anonymous and never to be done again. Slow kisses until his head spun and nothing was where it should have been. It wasn’t that but it wasn’t the other so it was nothing. Unless it was and did that matter, was that what he wanted?   
  
Bones closed his eyes, tipped his head back, wrapped his legs around Spock and stopped thinking because he had no idea what this was, not a single fucking one.  
  
\--  
  
He woke up in someone else’s room that smelled like the desert and thick drapes. Maybe a little bit like baked clay or hot stone. He was naked and that was strange. Bones stretched under the blankets and rolled onto his back.   
  
Spock was standing across the room by his computer with just his pants on. No shirt at all—just his bare back and his bony shoulders and the ropey thin muscles in his arms moving as he shook his shirts out straight. His hair hadn’t been brushed yet so it was messy and that was sort of cute. (Bones had just been fucked too hard, that was all, that was why he thought Spock was  _cute_.) “You bit me,” Spock said.  
  
“When?” Bones asked. The more awake he got the more aware of his body’s aches he got. His hips hurt and his ass was sore and his lower lip felt swollen still. He kicked the blankets down so he could sit up and that did him no good at all.   
  
“I believe we were on the observation deck. The injury has left a remarkably noticeable mark on my throat. There is no doubt that it will arouse curiosity.” Spock picked up a pile of folded clothes and brought them over to hand them to him.  
  
Sure enough there was a bright green bruise across Spock’s neck that looked a hell of a lot like teeth scraped hard over skin. Bones wasn’t sure what he thought about that so he just shrugged. It was a small ship. People were bound to find out.  
  
“I am only aware of Human mating customs in theory and I admit I have put very little research into the subject despite my current interest.”   
  
“That’s pretty damn obvious. What do Vulcans do anyway? Stand around and twitch their eyebrows?” That was just about all he’d ever gotten from Spock. Eyebrow twitches, stares, random doorbell ringing incidents and sex.   
  
“Our mates are chosen for us,” Spock said, “However, the woman that was intended to be my wife expired with Vulcan.”  
  
Well damn. Bones scratched his knee. “So what, you want pointers?”  
  
“I would appreciate some manner of instruction on the matter,” Spock said. “I believe the situation we now find ourselves in is often referred to as  _the morning after_.”  
  
Bones laughed. “Something like that.” He ran his hand across the clothes in his lap. “You’re talking to the wrong damn person if you want  _instruction in the matter_.” Then he rubbed his neck and stretched again. Spock was still standing there waiting for his statement to be explained. “Do you want to have lunch together?”  
  
“That would be acceptable,” Spock said.  
  
\--  
  
Lunch was awkward.  
  
Bones had no idea what the fuck to tell say. Spock made idle observations about the relative nutritional value of their meals. People stared at them.   
  
“Also,” Spock said when they returned their trays and were ready to leave the gawking crewmembers to eat (because they most definitely had not been eating while they stared and stretched their ears to hear). “The Captain inquired as to the source of the bruising on my neck.”  
  
The words were all in English and they were all in the right order but  _fuck_  if they just didn’t make sense right away. Bones could have blamed the bruises on his hips and he could have calmly explained to Spock that some things like,  _oh by the way your best friend who hates me just found out we’re fucking_  were not meant to be shared in doorways with a good tenth of the crew staring and listening in to their every word. He could have been calm. He could have accepted it as inevitable. He could have been intelligent. Instead he said, “what the hell did you tell him?”  
  
“I initially indicated that it was inappropriate to discuss, afterward he made several incorrect assumptions and then directly inquired as to the source of the bruising. I informed him that that source was—”  
  
“Oh, that’s  _good_ ,” Bones said.   
  
Spock lifted an eyebrow at him. “I was unaware that you wished to keep our relationship a secret. I attempted to caution you this morning.”  
  
He wasn’t too sure but he was almost entirely certain that Spock was calling him an ass (or maybe he just felt like one) and all at the same time it was—it was what it was. And what it was, well that was nothing good. Bones swept his bangs back away from his face and nodded his head. “I know. What  _exactly_  did you say?”  
  
“He inquired as to the source of the bruising,” Spock stopped there as a few Ensigns from Engineering asked to get around them. Bones pointed out toward the hall and Spock nodded so they were walking in the hall, close enough to brush shoulders and elbows. “I stated your name and he asked no further questions.”  
  
“Great.”  
  
Just fucking perfect.  
  
Spock pulled away from him as if he could hear the thoughts through the four layers of fabric that kept their skin apart and looked forward with a stoic determination not to acknowledge anything he had heard. “I must return to the bridge.”  
  
“Spock,” he couldn’t explain why he felt like an ass (yes he could), “come to my quarters later.”  
  
That seemed to shock him and that made sense because it damn sure shocked Bones. But Spock nodded before he left.  
  
\--  
  
Jim wasn’t going to come see him before the end of the shift, until he was sure that the bridge was going to be fine without him and all the orders that had been issued were reviewed twice or maybe three times. The man was going to give himself an ulcer worrying about worrying enough. (He shouldn’t be Captain when he hadn’t ever been anything but a repeat offender and a fairly good student.) Bones sat in Sickbay in the spinning chair with his arms across his chest and glared at the chronometer until all the team was wasted away and he could leave.  
  
If his staff, the great glorious arrogant lot of them were wondering what was going on, that tenth of the crew that had listened in to the source of Spock’s bruises was going to make sure everyone found out before the end of the night. Tomorrow they’d be biting their lips wanting to ask him questions.   
  
When he was leaving, Uhura was turning the corner toward Sickbay and she stopped short as soon as she saw him. The last time they’d been this close together she’d been confessing that the man everyone assumed was her boyfriend was really homosexual. She’d been upset then; she was  _furious_  now.  
  
“I hope,” she said and then stopped short, “No.  _You_  better hope that you know what you’re doing. And if you don’t? You better figure it out.”   
  
“I don—” Know what you’re talking about, might have been what he intended to say.  
  
She put her finger up and he was a smart enough man not to argue with her. “I can’t figure out why either of them likes you but they do, so you better make a decision and stand by it.” She didn’t tell him not to hurt Spock and she didn’t tell him he better pick Spock but she didn’t tell him not to. She just stared at him and then shook her head and turned around with a swish of her pony tail and walked away.  
  
\--  
  
Spock got there first. Bones wasn’t too sure if that was the universe’s sense of humor about the whole fucking thing, a statement about fate or the simple fact that Spock had been asked to be there. However it went, Spock was in the room, sitting uncomfortably on the chair by the empty desk, looking critically at his almost-entirely empty-shelves.  
  
Bones sat on the end of the bed and rubbed the back of his neck.  
  
“Leonard,” Spock said as he turned back to look at him, “may I ask a personal query?”  
  
He snorted and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He motioned with his hand to say that Spock could ask whatever he wanted and waited for whatever brilliance was sure to come of it. Spock hesitated for a minute before he straightened in his chair, glanced at the shelves and then back at him. “What do you believe is the basis for our relationship at this juncture?”  
  
Sex. “Hell,” he said, “Spock, I don’t know.”  
  
Spock didn’t like that. Setting aside the sex, they didn’t have one fucking thing in common. Spock was a half-alien that just lost everything and decided—for whatever reason—to follow some man he couldn’t have stand into space and if it weren’t for Uhura than it made no sense to have done so. When Spock wasn’t an arrogant, emotionally-ignorant asshole, he was only barely tolerable. Once he lost his clothes and started using his hands, it all made sense to them so—that was where they were now. “I believe you are falsely claiming ignorance, Leonard.”  
  
That made two of them. “We have sex, Spock. I don’t even know your first damn name—or if you have one, or if it is Spock. It’s good sex.”  
  
There was a pause as heavy as the falsely generated gravity. “Have you ever engaged in coitus with the Captain?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Spock considered that a moment. “Do you desire to do so?”  
  
Bones just about told him that it was none of his fucking business except, it was his fucking business. It was exactly his fucking business when they were fucking. He thought of Uhura and he thought of nothing and when he pushed all the thoughts of silence and static aside he just sighed. “Sometimes.”  
  
Spock stood.  
  
Bones stood, “You want me to be honest—I’m being honest. I’ve thought about it. There’s no fucking way not to think about it with him. I haven’t done it—not that it matters when you’ve gone out of your way to ignore me until you thought someone else was fucking me—”  
  
“Doctor, it is truly amazing you were able to obtain a medical license considering your poor deductive and reasoning skills,” Spock stated. He was going to leave, all stiff in the shoulders and right on the verge of showing an emotion (then again, last time he’d shown an emotion Bones had cried for what felt like hours. No sobs, just tears on his face and the hot skin wrapped all around him until the sweat on his body was like weeping).   
  
“Then tell me what I’ve missed because I’m pretty damn sure you’ve been ignoring me since we fucked the first time.”  
  
“Explain,” Spock said.  
  
“You shared your umbrella with Uhura!” If there were any justice in the world, he would have had time to feel like a fool but the universe was a cruel bitch and his door slid open to Jim standing there looking something between pissed and hurt. As soon as he saw Spock the hurt faded and the pissed took over.  
  
“Spock,” Jim said.  
  
“Captain,” Spock returned. “I believe now would be an appropriate time to excuse myself.”  
  
Jim just crossed his arms over his chest and kept his mouth shut. Spock looked at Bones and he had nothing worthwhile to say because this was nothing but a fuck of a situation. Still, with red flush to his face from being a fool, he said: “You don’t have to.”  
  
Spock’s eyebrow doubted that sincerity but he glanced at Jim and then at him again. “Excuse me,” he said.  
  
Bones didn’t object, didn’t watch Spock leave because Jim was glaring at him like daring him to look away with his arms over his chest. He barely managed a perfectly courteous nod at Spock before the doors slid shut. Then it was thirty-five seconds of nothing but his heartbeat and the silence of the ship moving through space.   
  
When Jim moved it was just an adjustment of his shoulders against the wall and his tongue at the corner of his mouth. He said: “So.”  
  
Bones rolled his eyes. “Stop being an asshole, Jim.”  
  
“I’m an asshole?” Jim said. He laughed with a tip of insanity. “ _I’m_  an asshole? Don’t you fucking southern gentleman get taught about common courtesy like not fucking some guy that accused your friend of cheating—”  
  
“You did cheat,” Bones said.  
  
“—In front of the whole fucking school and had the—I did  _not_  cheat! That test was a cheat and it would have stayed a cheat if someone hadn’t—”  
  
“You  _cheated_ ,” Bones repeated, “call it whatever you want but you didn’t like the fact that no matter how you tried, you  _failed_ —you couldn’t beat it by playing by the rules so you changed them. That’s  _cheating_.”  
  
Jim stared at him then, arms at his side. It took him a minute, a look to the left and then he was moving forward. “Cheating? It’s survival one-oh-one, Bones. If you’re going to live, if you’re going to keep your crew alive and if you’re going to do your job right, you can’t fucking sit in one spot waiting for a rescue ship that’s not fucking coming. No-win scenarios only exist if you’re fucking stupid enough to think there’s no way out just because  _someone_  told you there wasn’t. I didn’t  _cheat_.”  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“Fine.” Jim stared at him, at his face, at the way his lips were a little chapped, a little bruised around the bottom from that kiss yesterday by the wall. He looked down, like he was imagining what Bones must look like under his clothes. “Fuck,” Jim said and turned to kick the desk. “How long?” he asked the desk.  
  
“How long wha—”  
  
“How long have you been fucking him?” Jim asked without looking at him.  
  
Bones would rather have had the shouting, the quiet was too sharp around the edges. “That’s none of your busi—”  
  
“None of my business?” His mouth was open and his eyes were just blank before he blinked and tried to talk but all the words were caught behind a snort that was a cough and a laugh all at once. “None of my—when, Bones? When did you start fucking him?”  
  
Bones rolled his eyes and shifted on his feet.   
  
“When?”  
  
“It’s none of you—”  
  
“When, Bones?  _When_?” was shouted and all the silence around them shattered so it was easier to handle but it wasn’t  _easy._  
  
“Jim I’m no—”  
  
“ _When_?”  
  
“At the Academy!” Bones shouted back.   
  
Jim stared and his brain dug back to memories he had of things until he was pulling together dots in order that wouldn’t have made sense to anyone else. The man had a talent for making order of chaos and chaos of order. Once he found the thread—and then he just sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s why he won’t let you get written up. Son of a bitch.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Spock keeps talking people out of their complaints against you. He keeps track of all the submitted complaints and the reasons for rescinding them. It didn’t make sense before—you must be one hell of a fuck, Bones.”  
  
When you took away everything Jim could be, and everything he wanted to be, all that was left was a twenty five year old boy that didn’t get his way. Bones closed his eyes and looked at his feet. It wasn’t like he didn’t understand because—later, maybe—he would. It was that he knew what Jim was calling him now and when he looked up, he knew how Jim was going to be staring at him. “With all due, respect, Captain, you need to leave my quarters now.”  
  
Jim might have hated him then, might have hated whatever he hadn’t seen and didn’t get or he might have been six steps away from shoving Bones back onto the bed he was standing in front of and finding out for himself what kind of fuck he was. When he moved it was with a jerky nod and he turned, walking fast and stomping until the doors were swishing shut behind him and Bones was left all alone.  
  
\--  
  
Bones didn’t sleep much and he wasn’t ready to get up when the chime rang at the door. It wasn’t Jim because he hasn’t used the chime since he learned the code. It was Uhura, Spock or someone with an emergency and Bones wasn’t sure who he wanted it to be. He pulled himself out of bed, tugged his shirt down so it was almost straight and almost covering his waist and shuffled to the door.   
  
When it opened, Spock was standing there with his arms behind his back and a set of curious Ensigns staring at the two of them. Bones glared and they moved a few feet down the corridor but stayed without sight and sound.  
  
“What Spock?” he asked.  
  
Spock moved his arms and held out his hand. There was a blue umbrella in his left hand. “I am aware that it is unlikely to rain while we are on the Enterprise and therefore I have never sufficiently explained to myself or to Nyota why I chose to include this in my more logical choices as to which of my belongings to bring aboard this ship. However, in light of your statement last night and after some meditation, I have come to realize that this is the umbrella I intended to give to you on the day you say I ‘shared my umbrella’ with Nyota. At that time I was under the impression that it was customary among males of your species to engage in brief, mutually satisfying sexual intercourse and then proceed to feign ignorance of it thereafter.”  
  
Bones stared at the umbrella—there were a lot of words in there, something about Uhura, something about rain, something about Spock giving him an umbrella and thinking that getting stood up was normal. “You were going to give me an umbrella?”  
  
“I felt perhaps if you had one, you would not allow yourself to be caught in the sudden rain showers.” Spock lifted his hand a little higher. “Please accept it.”


	9. FML: Rewrite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's exactly what the title says. i gave myself fifteen minutes to rewrite FML changing one small detail.

Start: 12:34  
  
Bones had a thing going on with the rain that was more consistent than any other relationship he'd ever had. In San Francisco, apparently, weather men were about as reliable as fortune tellers at county fairs. Bones had been a boy taken in by gypsies and he'd been a full grown man taken in by the promises of honest-sounding men proclaiming the chance of rain to be less than ten percent. Although, really, it could have been that he had the worst luck out of anyone (but he preferred to think, really, that it was just that weather men knew nothing).   
  
So there he was, out in the rain, shoulders hunched and hair wet, sucking the taste of San Fran rain in through his nose and mouth and muttering the meanest things he'd ever said about anyone or anything back at it. He had no love for water that soaked him to the bone and even less love for unpredictable weather that liked to kick a man when he was down. So he'd gone off and fucked a Vulcan, that didn't make them boyfriends, that didn't make them anything but a couple of guys that had a simultaneous momentary lapse in judgment.   
  
For all he knew, Spock though he was an idiot. (And well, he was an idiot so that was just as well he knew it up front.) For all he knew, Vulcans didn't do relationships but brief sexual encounters with students and never talked to or called them again. For all he knew (and he thought he knew well enough) Spock was three-quarters the way engaged to Uhura and they were going to have lovely babies and grow old. (Or, really, Uhura was going to grow old and Spock was going to stay young for a hundred years.)  
  
The footsteps that dogged at his heels were getting louder and he jerked his head around toward the noise. Fuck his entire life if it wasn't Spock, himself, walking so fast someone might have considered it jogging. He had an umbrella in one fist and the one he'd offered to share with Uhura no where to be seen. Bones stopped short because he'd never seen anything as funny as a stick-thin Vulcan soaked to the bone trying to look proper and run all at once. He was half-turned, half-facing the sideways slant of the maddening rain when Spock saw that he'd been spotted and stopped a short distance away.   
  
For a minute, maybe two, he thought that Spock might have been embarrassed to be caught at it. "What are you doing?" Bones asked him. He was trying to keep his arms across his chest to stave off the icy cold that was sinking straight down to his bones and Spock was looking down at the umbrella in his hand like it should have been  _evident_. "I thought you were back there with Uhura."  
  
"Given your inability to properly prepare for inclement weather, I felt it would be appropriate to bring two umbrellas." He said it like it was simple math and  _of course_ he should make sure to keep an umbrella on him at all times just in case the poor idiot human forgot to get one.   
  
"You brought an umbrella for me?" Bones repeated.  
  
"Even though your are a doctor you constantly underestimate the likelihood that you will develop an illness due to your frequent exposure to the rain and the cold." Spock might have shrugged if Vulcans could shrug and then he held out the umbrella and took a step forward.  
  
"Why do you care?" Bones asked, "you're with Uhura."  
  
Spock looked confused by that but didn't drop his arm or move back away from him. "I am not  _with_  Uhura. Like yourself, I prefer males."  
  
So there they were, two idiots in a rain storm with a closed umbrella between them. Bones readjusted the way his arms were around his chest and looked over toward the dorms not too far off in the distance. Then back at Spock, "do you have a class you have to teach soon?"  
  
"Define soon," Spock said.  
  
"I was going to invite you back to my room and I want to know if we have time to have sex before you have to be somewhere. You seem like the kind of guy who's never late for anything." He shifted on his feet because it wasn't much of an offer and he hadn't been very good at keeping up with anyone (not even himself) ever since he lost his wife but Spock looked like the kind of guy who had enough patience for everyone.   
  
Spock didn't smile because  _of course he wouldn't_  but he did drop the arm that was holding the umbrella. "We will have sufficient time."  
  
"Let's go then," Bones said. It was still another five minutes before they made their way down the corridors of the dorms, shushed and trying to look like two men that weren't sneaking back for a quickie in the middle of the day--definitely not a student and teacher, definitely not. Spock stood just inside the door with his arms behind his back and looked around the small cube of space like he'd never seen the inside of one of dorm rooms before.   
  
"Spacious, isn't it?"  
  
"No," Spock said. There was a vague quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth before it was gone because Bones was kissing it away.  
  
\--  
  
Jim took finding out about it like he took everything--with a crude sense of a humor and a calculating stare. He had plenty of meanness to say about it and after Spock dragged him out in front of a group of cadets, he had even more to say about it. Bones wasn't married to anyone, much less Spock, so he let them fight it out and did his best to avoid the way Uhura looked like she was two seconds away from gutting him all the damn time.  
  
End: 12:49


End file.
